India: Three arrested for defrauding women through matrimonial sites

Three men were arrested for running a gang that allegedly duped women from different states after befriending them through matrimonial sites, Gurugram police said on Wednesday.

A Nigerian national who is reportedly the kingpin of the gang is absconding and police are conducting raids to nab him, they said.

A senior police officer said that the accused were identified as Aman Kumar, 26, Rahul Singh, 28, and a 38-year-old Santosh Kumar — all residents of Delhi.

The accused targeted women on matrimonial sites posing themselves as prospective grooms from abroad.

After befriending a woman posing as a foreign national, a gang member would ask her to send costly gift items, and other gang members would force her to cough up money in the name of tax and custom clearance posing as custom officials.

An FIR was lodged in the matter first when Shampa Pal, a native of Kolkata who lives in Chakkarpur area in Gurugram, filed a complaint on February 9 alleging she was duped of over Rs 1.3 million.

“I got in touch with a man through Instagram, who claimed to be a doctor in the UK. Soon after he shared his WhatsApp number also,” Pal said in her complaint, according to police.

At one point during their friendship, the man asked Pal to send her some gold and 20,000 British pounds.

On January 30, she got a call from a woman who said she was calling from a courier company.

“She told me that to get the parcel of gold and pounds I must pay tax and she shared a Union Bank account number to transfer money.

“The first time, I transferred Rs55,000, then subsequently Rs 327,920, Rs185,000, Rs 339,287, and Rs300,000. After this, she again called me for Rs726,000 more,” Pal wrote.

Following her complaint, an FIR was registered at Cyber Crime, East, Police Station on February 9 and the alleged frauds were arrested.

“We are conducting raids to nab other members of this gang. We are questioning the accused and hope many cases will be solved during the interrogation,” said Priyanshu Dewan, ACP, Cyber.

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