A 25-year-old woman, in search of a suitable match for herself, was duped by a 50-year-old conman who tricked her into giving him her gold chain on the pretext of marrying her, police said.
The trickster Prashant Manjire was arrested yesterday from a lodge in Dadar of central Mumbai on a tip off, said Deputy Police Commissioner Dhananjay Kulkarni.
According to police, the young victim gave a matrimonial advertisement in a Marathi newspaper mentioning that she was looking for a suitable groom.
“The victim provided her residential address and mobile number so that eligible matches can approach her,” the DCP said.
The accused, identifying himself as Manoj Wani contacted her saying that he too had been looking for suitable match. He posed as a ‘single’ although he was married and has a child.
“The soft spoken educated man, who did not disclose his age, impressed her with his behaviour in a first meeting near Kotwal garden in Dadar area on March 7. He convinced her to give him her gold ornaments for preparing jewellery for their wedding. Falling prey to his tactics, she handed over her gold chain but the accused never returned,” said another officer.
Realising that she was duped, she registered an FIR at Shivaji Park police station the next day.
Preliminary probe suggested that one more woman was conned in a similar fashion.
“After the second case, we verified if similar cases were reported in any other police stations in the city and found that Mulund police had arrested accused Prashant Manjire, a resident of Pune, in a similar case earlier. Accordingly, the victim was shown Manjire’s photograph when she identified him as the same person who approached her to marry her.”
While hunting down for the accused, a tip off was received that the accused had been hiding in a lodge in Dadar.
Accordingly, he was nabbed and gold ornaments weighing 110 grams estimated to be valued at Rs three lakh, have been recovered from a jewellery shop where he sold the valuables.
Police said some of the recovered gold ornaments also belonged to the victims fooled by him earlier.
