HYDERABAD: A 40-year-old man from Guntur duped a non-resident Indian of Rs 20 lakh by posing as an officer of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and marrying her. The Hyderabad police, acting on a complaint filed by the victim’s family members, arrested the accused K Venkata Ratna Reddy, on Saturday and seized the cash and a car from his possession.
The police said that on October 10, one Rajasekhar Reddy lodged a complaint stating that his niece, a divorcee and a resident of America, was deceived by Venkata Ratna Reddy. According to the complaint, her family members saw the profile of the accused on matrimonial portal Bharathimatrimony.com and after holding talks with him the marriage was performed.
In his profile, Venkata Ratna Reddy had claimed that he was unmarried and living alone while his mother and father expired. He talked well and impressed the woman’s family. About 20 days after marriage, he took $30,000 (approximately Rs 20 lakh) from the woman and returned to India, ACP (Cyber Crime) Raghuveer said.
The police, who registered a case against him, googled to unearth more details about him. To their surprise, they came to know that Venkata Ratna Reddy was a habitual criminal, involved in several cases such as car thefts.
In fact, it was found that he had intimidated a bank manager at gunpoint in Guntur district in 2009 and was also arrested once for posing as a revenue officer and trying to extort Rs 12 lakh from a film producer.
“The accused obtained passport from Visakhapatnam and went to USA on a business visa. After marrying a woman there, he tried to cheat another family in Canada by trapping another woman. He obtained a license to marry in Canada. We will write to matrimonial portal managements to keep track and take down his profile. We will also write to Visakhapatnam Special Branch police to find out how they allowed the accused to get a passport when he was involved in several cases,’’ the ACP said.
The modus operandi of the accused is that he posts his profile in matrimonial sites and contacts his prospective victims by furnishing false details.