New Delhi: They met on a social media platform in 2020 and began chatting. She lived in Assam and he said he lived in Bengaluru. Their conversations made her believe that he was well educated and came from a good family. They fell in love and he proposed to her. They planned on getting married in two years and things were rosy. She didn’t suspect a thing. Not initially.
However, over time, she began noticing a pattern.
“He started using my credit card for making payments to hotels and restaurants, for shopping and sometimes even for cash transfers. I didn’t think about it too much initially. I was in love and thought I was helping out my partner. But it started happening more regularly over time,” said the 32-year-old to ThePrint. Moreover, whenever she would ask him to talk to his parents about their relationship, he would make some excuse. “When he had proposed, he told me that we must treat this as a proposal for marriage,” she added.
Over time, she lost track of the amount of money she gave him — sometimes it would be an urgent cash requirement, sometimes it would be a phone, or a UPI payment for travel expenses.
The story is similar to several such cases of both men and women being conned or manipulated with a promise of marriage or relationship. In most cases, the victim doesn’t want to file a case for two main reasons — lack of legal parameters and shame.
Earlier this month, the Delhi High Court granted bail to a man accused of raping a woman after he made false promises of marriage to her, and of cheating her of Rs 1.2 crore. Noting that the accused and the victim met on a dating app and not on a matrimonial site, he was given bail.
There are several such cases of women in different situations who have not only been cheated on by such conmen but also exploited financially.
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Conmen’s ‘addiction’
The stories of these women — single women, single mothers of “marriageable” age — lay emphasis on how these incidents were aided by factors like lack of emotional support, and societal and patriarchal pressure to get married before a certain age.
When they come to know of the reality of the men they have put their trust in, they are left grappling with the after effects — abandonment issues, depression and anxiety.
The modus operandi of these conmen may differ but one thing remains constant — the women they prey on are financially independent and looking for a match.
Speaking to ThePrint, Umashankar Dash, currently posted as Deputy Inspector General (Naxal Intelligence), likened these conmen to “addicts”.
“They are womanisers and use women for profit. These conmen have a specific modus operandi in terms of the age group of women they target. The victims are educated, financially independent and are well placed in society. The accused exploit their psychological need for companionship and most of them don’t come out to lodge a complaint due to shame and stigma.”
Dash was Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Bhubaneswar, when one such conman — Ramesh Kumar Swain — was arrested after an eight-month chase.
In 2021, the Bhubaneswar Police had received a call from a Delhi-based school teacher accusing her husband, Swain, of being married to other women. He had allegedly swindled her of Rs 13 lakh after they met on a matrimonial site.
Swain, according to the police, had, in the past, also married a Supreme Court lawyer, a chartered accountant, and an officer with Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), among others. Some of Swain’s victims refused to be a part of the legal case against him, said Dash.
In April last year, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) lodged a separate case against Swain for alleged money laundering. Also known as Bibhu Prakash Swain, the 67-year-old man had earlier been arrested in 2011 for allegedly cheating people of Rs 2 crore in Hyderabad under the pretext of providing MBBS seats. Previously, in 2006, he was also arrested for allegedly duping several banks in Kerala of Rs 1 crore via forged credit cards.
The platforms that they use to swindle women also differ — matrimonial sites, dating apps and social media sites.
Earlier this year in Delhi, a woman in her early 20s was allegedly lured by a “Nigerian extortion gang”. The main accused, a Nigerian National named Evans, according to Hemant Tiwari, DCP Intelligence Fusion Strategic Operations (IFSO), had created a fake Instagram profile. The 37-year-old, living in Greater Noida, had initially befriended the woman via the fake profile and started off by asking her to make a payment for a parcel — a gift for her — stuck at customs. The accused had introduced himself as an investment banker.
“After the victim and the accused started talking, he began blackmailing her over some intimate photos and extorted Rs 2.25 lakh from her,” said Tiwari. The accused has been charged with cheating, extortion, and stalking.
In July last year, Mysore City Police arrested one Mahesh K.B. Nayak, a 35-year-old, for allegedly having married at least 15 women after meeting them on a matrimonial site posing as a doctor or engineer and running off with their valuables soon after.
This is similar to how “looteri dulhans” (con artist brides) reportedly function with cases having been reported from Haryana, Gujarat and Rajasthan. These brides are bought by men from outside their native states due to skewed sex ratio in their own states. Often facilitated by agents, they then later run off with cash and valuables.
In November 2022, a man had reportedly cheated a Pune-based IT professional, allegedly duping her of Rs 40 lakh after making false promises of marriage. They had met on Instagram.
In another case, a Patna-based lawyer was similarly duped of Rs 1 lakh the same year.
Back in 2016, Mumbai Police arrested a conman who had duped over 40 women. The accused Noor Sahab Shaikh had allegedly been doing this since 2008 and was arrested for the first time in 2016. Two others also worked with Shaikh as part of the syndicate. They would “smooth talk” women and later conned them under the false pretext of marriage.
‘Ashamed, humiliated’
The relationship 32-year-old from Assam was in with the conman had lasted two years — she had turned 30 and her parents wanted to meet the “mystery” boyfriend but he refused each time.
“He never introduced me to his parents. He kept saying he needs more time because we are from different castes and backgrounds. He said his mother wants him to marry a fair-skinned woman from their own caste. I am neither. But he was so charming and I was so smitten that I would end up feeling guilty for pressuring him,” she said.
Eventually, though, dates and meetings became infrequent. She was made to believe he had suffered losses at his event management business and needed to travel more often for work.
Then one day, it all came to a head. His phone buzzed and she looked.
“One day we were in a hotel we had booked to spend some time together. By this time, I had given him more than Rs 35,000. “When I picked up the phone, I saw multiple messages from a number. His screen was locked. That night after he slept, I put his thumb on the lock screen and unlocked the phone. I saw a flurry of messages with four to five women from different places. Initially I thought he was cheating on me but then when I opened the chats, I recognised the same pattern, meeting them on social media, proposing to them, and then going to their hometowns to meet them. He had also given them excuses whenever they asked him to fix a date for the wedding. These women had pampered him with expensive gifts and also paid for hotels and spa treatments,” she said.
When the 32-year-old reached out to one of these women on social media, she realised that Rahul had fed all of them similar lies. “I realised that he had expensive tastes, so all of us women would pamper him with gifts — shoes, watches etc. This woman told me that he had told her he had an import-export textile business. When I spoke to another woman, she said he had told her that he was an NRI, exploring the Indian market,” she said.
The next morning when she confronted him, his demeanour changed — “We aren’t married, what can you do about it?” he said.
“He got aggressive and told me that no one would want to marry me because I am dark-skinned and stormed out of the hotel. I cleared the bill and left. He had blocked me on social media apps by evening,” she added.
She shared this with her parents who called her “stupid”.
“I thought about going to the police but what would I tell them? That my boyfriend lied and used me? How will I prove the manipulation? I was ashamed and still feel humiliated. My parents warned me against dragging the matter. I started therapy as it was an extremely depressive episode. One of the women had, during that time, reached out to me and said that he actually had never even completed his Class 12,” the 32-year-old said.
“I now wonder who he actually was,” she said.
Repeat offenders
Senior police officers said that the accused commit the crime repeatedly since in many instances the victims do not even file a complaint. Moreover, even if they get arrested, they easily manage bail since they are only booked under sections of cheating, fraud, in which bail can easily be granted.
“If the accused has been charged with forgery of documents, identity, cheating and sex on the pretext of marriage, bail becomes difficult. However, once he is out, due to the addiction towards conning people, he gets back to it soon after being released. In most cases, by the time the first case has been registered, the accused has already mastered the art of cheating and takes up false identities, covers trails and keeps changing locations,” a senior police officer in Bengaluru told ThePrint.
Another senior police officer in Hyderabad said, “They mostly end up getting bail. In cases where the accused has been charged with blackmailing under sections of the IT Act, criminal breach of trust, cheating, impersonation, cheating by impersonation, forgery, rape on the pretext of marriage and bigamy, bail takes time but isn’t impossible”.
According to the officer, each time the accused is granted bail, he or she comes out stronger and knows better tricks to evade arrest, like in the case of any other conmen who cheat people.
According to DCP Tiwari, there are also out-of-court settlements done with the victim on the day of the arrest.
“The accused’s lawyer offers the money back to the victim and the case is closed. This encourages the accused to continue with these crimes,” he said.
What poses another hurdle in sending these conmen behind bars is that in cases where the fraud has taken place online, the police have to wait for the particular social media platform they used to get in touch, to give them information of the account holder.
“These cyber criminals use fake names, images and even locations. Sometimes, the social media platforms also refuse to share details crucial to the investigation, asking us to take the legal route and approach them under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), which often delays investigations. Even the bank accounts opened to receive money are created on bogus identities so it is difficult to trace them,” the officer said.
The 32-year-old from Assam has since moved on. She is now married. It was an arranged match, she said.
“I am just grateful I never shared any intimate photos with him,” she said.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)