Man marries 14 women after posing as govt officer

KENDRAPARA: An Indian man, 54, married 14 women across the country after posing as a government official which was later arrested for matrimony fraud worth millions.

The incident has surfaced in the Kendrapara district of India’s Odisha state in which a man, 54, duped several women across the country after marrying them.

According to Indian media reports, the man was identified as Ramesh Chandra Swain aka Bidhu Prakash Swain aka Ramani Ranjan Swain.

The arrest of the man was made following the complaint of a female student teacher of New Delhi in July last year. He fooled the woman by posing as a deputy director general in the Union Health Ministry. She had gotten married to the affected woman in 2018.

She filed the complaint against him after coming to know that he had cheated her.

The Indian police discovered during the investigation that Swain had married at least 14 women by introducing himself as a deputy director general and used matrimonial websites to establish contacts with the victims.

His target was middle-aged single women who were looking for companionship. He used to abandon the women after acquiring their money and their properties. Most of the affected women were residing outside Odisha state which includes lawyers, teachers, doctors and highly educated women.

According to the reports, the con man was father of five children as he married first in 1982 and his second marriage took place in 2002.

One of the affected women including an officials of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) in Punjab from whom he acquired Rs10 lakh, whereas, he also cheated Rs11 lakh from the Gurdwara where the marriage ceremony with the CAPF official was held by prompting the authority to set up a hospital there.

Police also found a criminal record of the accused man as he had been arrested by Kerala police in 2006 for cheating 13 banks of around Rs1 crore.

He was also arrested by a task force of Hyderabad police after cheating many students by promising them to provide admission in medical colleges. He had collected about Rs2 crore from the students including an owner of a nursing home in Hyderabad.

The police have already contacted nine out of 14 victims cheated by Swain and suspect that many other women might be his victim, and they may not come out due to fear of hampering their social prestige and status, according to the reports.

A case was filed against him at Mahila police station under different sections of the IPC, whereas, an investigation was also launched by the police to probe into the transaction of the fraud money.

Moreover, the Indian police officials also seized his 11 ATM cards, 4 Aadhar cards having different identities and one Bihar school certificate of a different identity.