Kerala: IT Engineer posing as Doctor arrested for duping woman of Rs 8 lakh on matrimonial site

Kasargod: An IT engineer has been arrested by the Kasaragod Cyber Crime police for cheating a woman of Rs 8 lakh by promising to marry her after making a fake profile on a matrimonial website where he introduced himself as a doctor. 

The accused was identified as 33-year-old Binoy Shetty alias Sanath Shetty who was arrested from his house at Surathkal on the outskirts of Mangaluru, said Cyber Crime inspector K Premsadan. The complainant is a 26-year-old woman who works for a pharmaceutical company in Mangaluru and is a native of Kasaragod town. 

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According to the police, the accused created a fake account on the matrimonial website, and fraudulently posed as a doctor working for a medical college at Attavar in Mangaluru and used his photograph. The complainant had met the accused through the matrimonial website. 

The woman and the accused had reportedly shared their phone numbers, and further became close to each other through the social media platforms Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, reports The New Indian Express. However, they had never met in person and the man eventually promised to marry the woman. However, the man who impersonated a doctor told the woman that he was short of Rs 10 lakh to start a clinic of his own. The inspector said, "She had her doubts because he was clueless when she mentioned any medical terms or health conditions. She also trusted him because he sold her hopes of marrying her," adding, "So she decided to help him with Rs 8 lakh." 

Thus, for the money transfer, Shetty sent the woman the bank details of his friend Vinay in Andhra Pradesh, following which she sent him Rs 7.57 lakh and the remaining Rs 43,000 in three installments. After he received the money, Shetty closed all his accounts on social media, canceled his WhatsApp number, and went incommunicado. 

After that, the woman went to file a complaint with the Cyber Crime police in Kasaragod. Police tracked Vinay and they found that Shetty had gone to Andhra Pradesh, and taken the money from him in cash. Also, during the investigation, the police found that one of the numbers shared by the accused with the woman had become active once in a while. 

The inspector Premsadan told TNIE, "We traced the number of an address in Mangaluru and found that it belonged to Shetty's in-laws." The police found that Shetty had gotten married two years back to a person who taught at a private university in Mangaluru. The inspector observed, "They are well settled with a monthly income of more than Rs 1 lakh." Vinay and his spouse had no idea about Shetty's fraudulent activities on matrimonial websites. 

When Shetty kept shifting cities, he told his wife that it was related to his work. The officer said, "He frequently moved between Mangaluru, Mumbai, and Bengaluru and Hyderabad." He had reportedly always remained on the police radar. He was arrested by inspector Premsadan, sub-inspector Ajith P K and their team after he returned to his house on Thursday. He was charged with cheating (Section 420 of IPC) and cheating by impersonation using communication devices (Section 66 D of the IT Act). The inspector said, "He told us that he duped the woman to escape to another country."

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