Exec duped of ₹3.91L by man she met on matrimonial site

A woman working in a multinational company was allegedly duped of ₹3.91 lakh by a man she met on a matrimonial website.

The police said the man told her he had settled abroad and said he wanted to marry her. He told her that he would be coming to India to meet her family. After a few days, along with an aide, who posed as a customs official, he tricked her into transferring the money in several instalments.

According to the police, the woman had come in contact with the man earlier this year on a matrimonial website. He introduced himself as an urban planner, who had grown up in Uttarakhand and moved to Manchester, England, at the age of five with his mother.

“We exchanged numbers and started talking over WhatsApp calls. He said that he wanted to visit India and meet my family and expressed his desire to get engaged to me. On June 5, he sent me a copy of his flight tickets from London to Mumbai and said that it was a ‘surprise’. He said that he would be taking a connecting flight to Delhi. The following morning, I got a call from a woman, who claimed she was calling me from the airport. She said that my ‘friend’ had been detained and I would have to pay certain charges or he would be deported,” she said.

The police said that over the next few hours, the victim was asked to transfer money online on the pretext of certain miscellaneous charges to help her friend.

“I was told that he was carrying luggage (44 kg), foreign currency (85,000 pounds) and jewellery beyond the prescribed limit and I need to pay money or else he would be deported. The woman made me worry further saying that he had not eaten anything for several hours and was upset. She even offered to pay a partial amount ( ₹85,000) herself,” she said.

The police said that after the woman transferred the money online, she suspected something was amiss and checked with her brother. Her brother asked her to report the incident and she filed a complaint the same day. The woman received messages from the man, claiming that he was stuck at the airport the following day, before he switched off his phone.

A police official privy to the investigation, requesting anonymity, said the case was registered after an investigation on Monday. “The suspect and his aide are yet to be identified,” the police officer said.

A case was registered against the unidentified suspect under sections 66 and 66D of the Information Technology Act and Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code at the Cyber Crime police station, the police said.