Kochi: A three-member gang, including a 27-year-old woman from Indore, arrested for alleged matrimonial fraud based on the complaint of a Kochi native, have allegedly duped at least five men and swindled money worth Rs 1.37 crore besides gold jewellery, police said on Tuesday. Megha Bharghav (27), her sister Prachi Bhargav (29) and her husband Devensh Sharma (32) - the alleged fraudsters, used to target rich but physically disadvantaged men from the Jain community settled in various states. “They used to zoom in on victims by going through matrimonial ads. Then Megha used to ‘marry’ the victim before making off with the cash and other valuables, received as gifts, after a brief period,” said Ananthalal, Circle Inspector, Ernakulam Central.
The trio was brought here days after their arrest from Noida as part of evidence collection. In 2012, Megha married one Rajesh Goleja of Raipur in Chattisgarh and allegedly duped him of Rs 90 lakh. Later, she went on to marry four more persons - Hemanth Kumar of Gujarat in 2014, Sandesh Chopra of Jodhpur in Rajasthan, Lenin Jithendar of Kochi in 2015 and Arun Kumar of Surat in Gujarat in 2016, who were all cheated in a similar fashion. “We are probing if they had carried out similar fraud elsewhere in the country and have passed on information regarding their arrest to police units in other states,” the officer said. Last year, Lenin Jithendar had lodged a complaint with the Kadavanthra police that his wife Megha had made off with Rs nine lakh and gold jewellery weighing 25 sovereigns, 20 days after their marriage in May 2015.
“It was through Mahendra Bundela, a native of Madhya Pradesh, that the complainant’s family fixed an alliance with Megha. Twenty days after the marriage, her sister Prachi and Devendra arrived to take their sister home on the pretext of a religious custom and she never returned after that,” police said. Soon, the complainant’s family went to Indore in search of the missing bride and traced their house, which had been lying closed for a very long time. Sensing trouble, they lodged a cheating case with the Kadavanthra police.
