Odisha: The man married for the first time in 1982 and most recently in 2020. (Representative)
Bhubaneshwar:
The number of women on the list of a 66-year-old man from Odisha who married middle-aged, educated and wealthy women from several states rose to 17, with three more cases coming up, a police official said on Wednesday.
It was previously alleged that the man, who is currently in police custody, has been married 14 times.
The police officer said the suspect, who approached women under the false identity of a doctor, also tied the knot with a registered account of Chhattisgarh, a doctor from Assam and a highly educated lady from Odisha.
“Three more wives of the fake doctor have been identified,” Bhubaneswar Deputy Police Commissioner US Dash told reporters in Bhubaneswar.
A student from Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district also claimed that the fake doctor cheated on him for 18 lakh after securing him a place in a medical college in the state.
“His cell phones will be sent to the forensics lab and his financial transactions will be investigated,” Mr Dash said.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was also called in for help as the suspect was in possession of three PAN cards and 11 ATM cards.
According to police, he cheated on his wives, four of whom live in Odisha, three in Delhi, three in Assam, two in Madhya Pradesh and Punjab, and one each in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, for lakhs of rupees before moving on. . to greener pastures.
Sixty-year-old Ramesh Chandra Swain, who has gone by various names such as Dr. Bibhu Prakash Swain and Dr. Ramani Ranjan Swain, hails from a coastal town in the Kendrapara district of Odisha.
An expert at women’s persuasion, Swain lured college teachers, even hard-boiled cops and wayward lawyers, as he went about beating middle-aged women desperate for companionship with Cupid’s arrow.
However, his luck ran out on Monday on Valentine’s Day after 38 years when he was arrested by police over the allegation of his last wife from Delhi whom he married in 2020.
Swain married for the first time in 1982 and most recently in 2020. His last marriage to a teacher was solemnized at an Arya Samaj temple in Delhi.
However, he denied the allegations. “I am not married to all of these women and I am indeed a doctor,” Swain claimed as he was escorted to court.
Swain befriended women on marriage websites and deftly hid his marital status.
He is reported to have cheated his wife from Punjab for Rs 10 lakh, and the Gurudwara, where his marriage was solemnized, of Rs 11 lakh, promising to facilitate the establishment of a medical college. He was previously arrested twice for defrauding unemployed youth and loan fraud in Hyderabad in 2010 and Ernakulam in 2006, police said.
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