In a shocking revelation, a man from Odisha was arrested for allegedly defrauding several women across seven cities after marrying them by posing as a doctor.
The accused was identified as Bidhu Prakash Swain (54) alias Ramesh Swain, a resident of the Kendrapara district. He lived outside Odisha most of the time.
Swain used to target women from Punjab, Delhi, Assam, Jharkhand, and Odisha. His targets would be mostly middle-aged women and divorcees. He would contact them through matrimonial sites, posing as a doctor working for the Union Health Ministry.
“His targets were highly-educated and worked in senior positions at various government and private organisations. He had his eyes on their money,” Bhubaneswar DCP Umashankar Dash told India Today.
Among Swain’s victims were an advocate at the Supreme Court and a senior Central Armed Police Forces.
He married the CAPF official from Punjab in 2018 and duped her of around Rs 10 lakh.
Later, he duped the Gurdwara, where the marriage was solemnised, of Rs 11 lakh on the promise of sanctioning a hospital.
As per reports, Swain is a father of five children and had married for the first time in 1982 and then in 2002. Between 2002 and 2020, he befriended several women and married them.
After marriage, he used to stay with them for a few days and would leave the women at their parents’ place on the pretext of going to the Northeast or Bhubaneswar for some work.
Dash said that Swain was arrested based on a complaint filed by a Delhi-based teacher in July 2021. The victim, in her complaint, said that Swain had married her at an Arya Samaj temple in New Delhi.
Following the complaint, he was arrested from a rented accommodation in the Khandagiri area of Bhubaneswar and booked under sections 498 (A), 419, 468, 471 and 494 of the Indian Pemnal Code.
During the probe, it was found he had duped 13 more women whom he had met on various matrimonial sites and social media.
The police also recovered 11 ATM cards, 4 Aadhaar cards with different identifies, and a school certificate from Bihar under yet another identity
Swain was earlier arrested in Hyderabad for duping unemployed youngsters on the pretext of providing jobs or securing admissions in MBBS courses. He collected Rs 2 crore from several people across India by posing as the deputy director-general of the Central Health Education and Training.
He was also arrested for loan fraud at Ernakulam in Kerala.
The police will seek Swain’s remand. “If needed, an all-women team will be formed for further probe. A professional counsellor will also be included in the team for counselling his victims,” the DCP said.
“We are planning to conduct a detailed financial investigation in the fraud. We will seek longer remand of the accused for a detailed probe,” said DCP Umashankar Dash.
