KOLKATA: Three foreign nationals residing in Noida have been arrested for allegedly extorting almost Rs 8 lakh from a Bengal girl on the false promise of marriage, police said on Tuesday.
"We have caught three Nigerians connected with the case. They were arrested in Noida on Sunday and produced in court there, then we got the transit remand and today (Monday) they reached Kolkata. They were produced in the local court here on Tuesday," said a senior police official .
The team of Chandannagar Police Commissionerate managed to trace the accused's whereabouts with the help of Noida police after a week-long effort.
According to police, Sharmistha Mukherjee, 22, a resident of Uttarpara in Hooghly district, met her prospective groom on a well-known matrimonial site. The man, pretending to be an NRI, allured the girl after meeting on the site and speaking over the phone.
"Somebody had pretended that he would be coming from the US to meet the girl for marriage purpose. He told the girl that he is stuck at the New Delhi airport and needs some money for the clearance and the girl agreed," said the police.
She sent almost Rs 8 lakh rupees to help him. But the man snapped all contact after she had transferred the money to his account.
The girl had lodged a complaint at the Uttarpara Police Station in mid-April.
The Nigerians were caught on the basis of CCTV footage at an ATM in Noida as they had withdrawn the amount from the account where the money was transferred through repeated transactions.