BHUBANESWAR: For over four decades, Ramesh Chandra Swain posed as a doctor and a senior Central government official, conned 14 women into marriage and swindled their riches while also defrauding banks and financial institutions to the tune of crores. The 66-year-old Ramesh alias Dr Bidhu Prakash Swain alias Dr Ramani Ranjan Swain, who belongs to Singhalo in Kendrapara district, was finally arrested by Bhubaneswar police on Monday.
Police said, he mostly targeted educated, well-to-do and highly placed women across different states. The women he married included an assistant commandant of Indo-Tibetan Border Police, a deputy general manager in National Insurance Company Limited, a lawyer in Delhi High Court and five teachers. He impersonated as deputy director general of a department under the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry and had contacted the victims on matrimonial sites.
The tip-off about his fraud came when one of the victims, a Delhi-based school teacher, lodged a case against him on July 5 last year at the Mahila police station here. Swain and the teacher had tied the knot in Delhi’s Janakpuri in 2018 and she stayed with him for a few months in Bhubaneswar. It is during her stay in the Capital city when she realised that he was a fraud. A domestic help who was aware of his practice informed the complainant about his previous marriages.
Swain was frequently changing his place of stay across the country for which the Commissionerate Police faced difficulty in tracing him. He was eventually nabbed while driving a rented car near Aiginia. He is allegedly running two clinics in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. Swain had first married a woman of Kendrapara district in 1982 and his last marriage was in 2020. The accused has three children from his first wife and he is claiming that they all are doctors, said Special Squad ACP Sanjeev Satpathy.
His second wife is a chief medical officer in a multi-state cooperative society and they have two children. He tied the knot with the ITBP assistant commandant three years back at a Gurdwara in Punjab and took away Rs 10 lakh from her. He also fraudulently collected Rs 11 lakh from the Gurdwara officials on the promise of giving them permission from the Ministry to start a medical college, said Satpathy.
The police have so far managed to trace nine victims hailing from Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, among others. Many women realised that he was a fraudster and deserted him. Swain also remained incommunicado after cheating the victims. He was using red beacons on his vehicles to gain the confidence of the victims that he was a Central government employee.
The accused told the investigators that he completed his Plus II in science from Kendrapara College and pursued courses in medical laboratory technology from a college in Kochi, and alternative medicine in Kolkata. Police said his educational claims are subject to verification but confirmed that he is not an MBBS degree holder.
Swain not only made money by conning well-educated women but also cheated banks, students and job aspirants. Ernakulam police had arrested Swain in 2006 for cheating banks to the tune of Rs 2 crore by impersonating as a Central government employee and submitting fake documents to avail loans.
He was also arrested by Hyderabad Police in 2010 for allegedly duping youths on the promise of providing them MBBS seats and jobs. He claimed that he had completed his MBBS from Veer Surendra Sai Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (VIMSAR) in Burla.