Indian woman poses as man, gets married twice for dowry

Domestic abuse against one nails her.

This borders on the bizarre.
An Indian woman disguised herself as a man and tricked two women into marrying her, while extracting dowry from one of them and tormenting her. Her real identity came to the fore when a domestic abuse case was brought against her. The police arrested her on February 14 on charges of impersonation, fraud and forgery.
The woman - Sweety Sen (25) - cut her hair short and attired like a man. She wooed women via Facebook with her attractive profile under the name 'Krishna', according to media reports.  Sen uploaded photos and chatted with many women on the social media site. Sen had the numbers of more than 200 women in her phones when he was booked.
She first duped a woman into marriage in 2014. "She used to behave like a man, used to drink, smoke and also abuse," her first wife told Hindustan Times. Sen initially got over $16,000 (Dh59,000) in dowry from her family. Then, she married another woman in 2016.
Sen wallowed in luxury and indulged in a lavish lifestyle. Expensive beverages, costly furniture, pedigree dogs and smartphones were recovered when the police swooped on her home.
Both the women she married hailed from Uttarakhand, while Sen was from Bijnore in Uttar Pradesh. She posed as a son of a businessman in Aligarh to marry the first wife. Sen rented a room in Tikoniya area of Haldwani and kept both his "wives" there, police was quoted as saying to Hindustan Times.
Interestingly, when the second wife came to know that her husband was not a man, Sen promised that she would pay her money to stay mum.  Sen allegedly did not let the women look at her body or touch her and used other ways to maintain the illusion she was a man, police told the daily.
The first wife, who was abused and intimidated by Sen, lodged a case against her "husband" for thrashing her and for tormenting her for more dowry.
When the police started investigation, they were surprised to find that Sen was biologically a woman.
Police charged her with dowry harassment, but since the marriages were invalid, they changed the charges to that of impersonation, forgery and fraud. The lookout for Sen's family members - who were present during both the weddings - is on.

• India