NRI bride trap: Four get 5-year RI for duping youths on pretext of marriage

A Faridkot court on Thursday sentenced four members of a gang, who duped Punjabi youths of lakhs of rupees on the pretext of marriage with Canadian girls, to five years of rigorous imprisonment.

The court of additional chief judicial magistrate Monika Lamba convicted Narinder Purewal of Jalandhar, Parampal Singh of Golewala in Faridkot, Gagandeep Singh of Amritsar and Parveen Kaur alias Manpreet Kaur Dhaliwal of Moga under section 420 (cheating) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC.

The court observed that in view of the evidence, this court has reached the conclusion that the prosecution has duly proved that all the accused persons had hatched a criminal conspiracy to defraud the complainant and there is the connivance of all the accused persons in defrauding the complainant under the pretext of sending his son abroad. “The offence of section 420 and 120B of IPC have been duly proved by the prosecution against all the accused persons. Hence, Narinder Purewal, Manpreet Kaur Dhaliwal alias Parveen Kaur, Parampal Singh and Gagandeep Singh are hereby held guilty and convicted. Meanwhile, the offences under section 465, 467, 468 and 471 of IPC are not proved against the accused,” the court ordered.

In March 2019, Faridkot’s Golewala resident Sardool Singh filed a complaint that a gang had duped him of ₹35 lakh on the pretext of getting his son married to an NRI woman. In January 2017, the marriage was solemnised between the complainant’s son and Manpreet Kaur Dhaliwal, who remained in the complainant’s house for two months. Thereafter, accused Purewal came and took her to Jalandhar and later informed them that she had gone to Canada. Dhaliwal had told the complainant’s son that, her aunt (Purewal) would come here, and thereafter, they would apply for his visa and his file. But Dhaliwal disappeared. Following this, police registered an FIR and arrested the accused.

Modus operandi

Purewal was the mastermind of the gang, which had cheated the youth on the pretext of marriage to an NRI bride.

The gang used to give advertisements in local newspapers, seeking grooms willing to go abroad. When families of grooms approached the gang, a deal was struck assuring the kin of settling the boy with the NRI brides in foreign countries (mostly Canada) after marriage.

The accused would then introduce the fake brides and their ‘relative’ from abroad. They would present fake documents along with the passport of the girl to the groom’s family. To make sure that the event looked authentic, the bride’s fake relatives were also arranged by the gang.

A few months after the wedding, the brides would disappear, leaving the families confused.

The Jalandhar-based gang has conned more than a dozen families by arranging marriages with fake NRI brides as a ‘passport to foreign shores’. As many as 18 similar cases have been registered against the mastermind at different police stations in Ludhiana, Moga, Jalandhar, SBS Nagar and Amritsar.