Woman disguises as man, marries two women, gets arrested

PUNE: A 25-year-old woman duped ‘everyone’ after she dressed up as a man and persisted with the deceptive appearance for four years and married two women during the span. But the ‘con-woman’ was caught after dispute over dowry with one of her wives.

The incident occurred in India’s Uttarakhand’s.

Named Sweety Sen, a resident of Dhampur in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnore, started posing as a man, Krishna, in 2013, said Nainital’s senior cop investigating the case.

She was arrested on February 14 on charges of impersonation, fraud and forgery.

“The lady used to pose as a man in terms of looks and enticed women on Facebook and later married them,” the officer said.

Police said Sen created a Facebook account in the name of Krishna Sen in 2013 and uploaded photos posing as a man.

She then contacted and chatted with several women on social media.

Sen travelled to Haldwani’s Kathgodam area to meet a woman she befriended on the social media website in 2014. She told the Uttarakhand woman, identified as Kamini, that she was the son of a businessman from Aligarh, said the police. The two women got married later that year, and shortly afterwards, Sen allegedly started beating up Kamini, who holds two masters degrees, for dowry.

Sen also allegedly took Rs 8.5 lakh from Kamini’s family, police said.

“We got married in 2014, she used to behave like a man, used to drink, smoke and also abuse. She used to threaten to kill me after she married another woman,” Kamini told news agency ANI.

Two years later, Sen lured another woman from Uttarakhand’s Kaladhungi town and married her in April 2016, police said. The “second wife”, identified as Nisha, was present during Sen’s first wedding as a guest. Sen rented a room in Tikoniya area of Haldwani and kept both his “wives” there, police said.

A police official quoted Sen as having said that she dressed up as a boy since her childhood.

After the complaint by one of the wives, a medical examination was conducted and it concluded that Sen was biologically a woman.

“Krishna has been booked for forgery and not for dowry. Technically she was not a husband therefore it cannot be treated as marriage,” said Sanjay Joshi, the investigation officer in the case.