A 23-year-old woman, who has allegedly scammed 25 men through a series of marriages, was arrested by the Rajasthan Police in Bhopal, officials said Tuesday.
The woman, identified as Anuradha Paswan, a native of Maharajganj in Uttar Pradesh, had been living in for a while after allegedly duping one Vishnu Sharma and his family in Rajasthan’s Sawai Madhopur.
As per Sawai Madhopur’s Mantown police station, Sharma, who pulls a cart in Sawai Madhopur, wanted to get married and came in touch with one Pappu Meena, who showed him Anuradha’s photo.
Sharma told that Meena used to bring women to a local park for matchmaking and that’s where he met Anuradha and they decided to get married.
The marriage was solemnised at the local court on April 19, with Sharma saying he paid Rs 2 lakh cash, including borrowed money, to Meena who set up the alliance.
Subsequently, he and Anuradha started living together as husband and wife.
“As per their modus operandi, the gang members used to pick her up in the middle of the night within 5-7 days of marriage. However, I have a fast-food cart and hence I used to return only by 10.30 pm, then have dinner, and watch television well past midnight. And someone or the other used to stay up very late. Hence it took her 13 days to dupe us,” Sharma said.
On May 2, Anuradha allegedly spiked the food served to her in-laws. “We had prepared chhole-bhature but I suspect she had spiked the water. That night too I had asked her why my eyes were so heavy,” Sharma said, adding that she was behaving a bit “odd”. However, he fell asleep, as did his parents, sister and brother.
When they woke up the next morning, they realised that she had fled the house with jewellery, cash and a mobile phone, police said. Assistant Sub-Inspector Meetha Lal Yadav, said an FIR was lodged on May 3 under various sections, including those that deal with cheating.
“We went through the marriage agreement, which had her address, and reached the location in Bhopal. However, we discovered that the address given by her was fake. Our team decided to stay on in Bhopal to try and locate her,” said Yadav, the investigating officer in the case.
“We spoke with taxi drivers, locals, etc. and told them that we want to get a person — a constable who was part of our team — married. The locals pointed us to some persons who arranged marriages,” Yadav said.
He said that his team stayed put in Bhopal for four days as part of the investigation, and that the patience finally paid off when someone finally came with a photo of Anuradha.
“This photo matched the one in the marriage agreement with Sharma. We then zeroed in on her. She was living in Kalapipal, near Bhopal, with a man named Gabbar, whom she had married about five-seven days ago and was planning to scam too,” the officer said.
Upon questioning, she and her agents admitted that she had got married about 25 times so far, police said.
While she was arrested on Sunday evening from Bhopal and subsequently presented in court, her accomplices are still being questioned and police are on the lookout for some others, Yadav said.
