A man who had allegedly befriended a woman through a matrimony site and duped her of around Rs 68,000 with the false promise of marriage has been arrested.
“Asish Dey, 38, who had posed as a gold merchant, was arrested at a hotel on EM Bypass in east Kolkata, where he was meeting another woman he had befriended through the same matrimony site,” a police officer said.
Dey had allegedly told the complainant that he needed money as he was facing a problem in running his business.
The woman, a resident of Kaikhali on the northeastern fringes of Kolkata, has told the Bidhannagar police that she had given him Rs 68,460 on “good faith” thinking they were about to get married.
“After the accused took the money, he apparently cut off all connections with the woman. She lodged a complaint with us in October,” said an officer of the cyber cell of the Bidhannagar commissionerate who made the arrest.
During investigation, the police came across Dey’s contact details from the matrimony website and found that his tower location was mostly in Varanasi.
On Saturday, they learnt that he had come to Kolkata and was staying at a star hotel near Science City.
A team of officers of the Bidhannagar cyber crime cell went to the hotel and found him with another woman, whom he allegedly first met through the same matrimony website through which he had befriended the complainant.
“A little background check revealed that he had befriended even this woman through the same matrimony site. Dey was arrested from this hotel and has been charged under IPC sections related to cheating and criminal breach of trust,” said the officer.
There have been multiple instances of people registering with matrimony sites with fake credentials, possibly with the intention to cheat others.
A senior police officer said those who log into matrimony sites should not share their personal or intimate photographs or banking details with anyone they had befriended through the site.
“Physical verification is extremely important. We come across many cases where men posing as someone else have duped women by promising them marriage,” said the officer.
Dey was produced in the Bidhannagar court on Sunday and has been remanded in judicial custody, the police said.
