Match-mocker held

Manabendra Khan after his arrest. Picture by Manoj Biswas

Ranaghat, Nov. 10: Meet Manabendra Khan: the groom’s guardian, the groom’s voice and the groom himself.

The 51-year-old government employee in Calcutta was arrested today on the charge of posing as a Jadavpur University professor and taking money from a Nadia-based girl’s family by playing matchmaker for a non-existent doctor whom he claimed to have brought up.

Khan, a work assistant with the PWD, had allegedly posed as “professor Amit Roy” and told the family of the girl, whose matrimonial ad he saw in a newspaper, that he had brought up the prospective groom — “doctor Aveek Banerjee, posted in a Purulia hospital” — after Banerjee’s parents died in a car accident in his childhood.

Khan had for the past five months spoken to the girl and her parents over the phone in a younger man’s voice, posing as the doctor.

In June, Khan had met the girl’s family in Ranaghat and shown them the picture of a youth, claiming he was the prospective groom.

The PWD employee who lives in a government quarters in Tollygunge had allegedly taken Rs 1 lakh from the girl’s father, who runs an artificial flower business in Nadia’s Ranaghat, by lying to him that “doctor Banerjee” needed to bribe an official to get a posting in Calcutta.

The girl’s father said that on September 22, she personally went to Sealdah and handed over the money to Khan.

He said that on October 18, Khan called him up again to tell him that Banerjee had met with a motorbike accident and needed Rs 1 lakh more for treatment in Chennai.

“I told him I wanted to meet Aveek at the hospital. But Amitbabu avoided mentioning the name of the hospital and did not call us up for a few days,” the girl’s father said.

The family contacted Purulia police and came to know that no bike accident had been recorded in the district on the date mentioned by Khan. The police found out that there was no doctor by the name of Aveek Banerjee in the Purulia hospital mentioned by Khan.

The girl lodged a complaint at Ranaghat police station on October 29.

“We asked her to call up Khan and tell him to collect the money from her in Sealdah,” an officer said. “As soon as the accused arrived, we arrested him,” the officer added.