Salt Lake: Police have arrested a man who allegedly posed as a RAW official and duped at least two women into marrying him.

Cops picked up Debarshan Mitra, in his early 40s, from Salt Lake on Wednesday based on a woman's complaint.

In her complaint with Bidhannagar North police station on Tuesday, the woman said she got to know Mitra through a matrimonial site and they married in February.

Mitra, a Howrah resident who is married and has a child, had told the woman he was a "deputy secretary in the Research and Analysis Wing", India's external intelligence agency, an officer of Bidhannagar commisionerate said.

The woman, originally from Suri in Birbhum, stays with her uncle in Salt Lake.

This was his third marriage, the officer said.

"He tried to trick our officers into believing he was an intelligence officer. Nobody who works for RAW will mention it on a matrimonial site," Amit Javalgi, deputy commissioner, headquarters, Bidhannagar commissionerate, said. "We knew he was bluffing and arrested him after his identity card turned out to be fake."

Mitra had met the woman several times and once an elderly woman pretending to be his mother had accompanied him when he went to meet her uncle, an officer said.

The woman grew suspicious when they moved into a flat in the BT Road area after marriage. "Every night he used to slip out on the pretext of an assignment. When she confronted him, he apparently thrashed her," the officer said.

Mitra used to run a hardware store in Howrah during the day and would tell the woman he was on "a top secret assignment". In the night he would return to his wife and child in Howrah, he said. "He told us that he cheated another woman in a similar manner. He can be quite convincing when he talks."

Mitra has been booked under various IPC sections, including 419 (cheating by impersonation), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for cheating).

The charges carry a maximum punishment of life in jail.