Digital Desk: A 54-year-old man was detained on Monday in Bhubaneswar for allegedly defrauding 14 women by marrying them and fleeing with their money, according to a senior police official.
The accused posing as a doctor or a high ranking government officer, Bibhu Prakash Swain alias Ramesh Swain, would target women on matchmaking websites, marry them, and then disappear with their money, according to Bhubaneswar deputy commissioner of police, Dr Umashankar Dash.
According to Dash, the 54-year-old man; Swain had married and conned 14 women prior to his incarceration, including a high-ranking official in the
Indo Tibetan Border Police and a lawyer in the Delhi High Court.
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"His primary goal was to obtain money and property from the ladies when they married him. He would contact ladies from states such as Punjab, Jharkhand, and Delhi, through several matrimonial websites. Swain took full advantage of the women he targeted since they either married late or were divorced. The majority of the victims are highly educated and hold critical positions in a variety of government and private sector organisations," Dash added.
Swain, according to investigators, has been defrauding women since 2002.
In July 2021, a school teacher from Delhi filed a complaint against Swain after learning about his previous marriages. In 2018, he married the instructor at an Arya Samaj temple.
Based on the complaint, police arrested Swain from a rented house in Bhubaneswar's Khandagiri area and charged him with violating Indian Penal Code Sections 498 (A) (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty), 419 (punishment for cheating by personation), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), and 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record).
Swain, a father of five, was married to his first wife in 1982, according to police. In 2002, he married for the second time.
The 54-year-old man was from the state's Kendarapada area, but he remained in Assam for a while, they claimed, adding that after marrying each victim, he would take them to a different spot in Bhubaneswar. According to a police officer, he married an ITBP official in a gurdwara in Delhi in 2018 and then scammed her out of ten lakh rupees. Swain then tricked gurdwara authorities out of 11 lakh by posing as the director of the health and family welfare department and offering assistance in obtaining permission to operate a hospital, according to the officer.
During the inquiry, it was also discovered that Swain was detained in 2011 by a special task squad in Hyderabad for allegedly duping numerous MBBS aspirants out of Rs 2 crore. Swain, posing as the deputy director general of central health education and training, has deceived numerous job seekers in various regions of the nation, according to authorities. Significantly, Swain had also defrauded the proprietor of a nursing facility in Hyderabad under the guise of securing a medical seat for his son, according to investigators.
"We want to undertake a thorough financial investigation into the fraud. We will request that the accused be held for a longer period of time in order to conduct a thorough investigation. We realise that many of Swain's victims will not come forward to file a complaint for fear of losing their social standing, but we urge them all to speak out," Dash added.
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