BENGALURU: A 28-year-old man, who has reportedly cheated half a dozen women of their money after promising to marry them, has landed in the custody of
cybercrime
police.
Pramod Manjunath Hegde
alias
Akash Bhat
from
Siddapura
in Uttara Kannada district was arrested after a 34-year-old city-based woman filed a complaint. Police have seized a sedan, laptop, mobile phone and 40 grams of gold ornaments from the Varthur resident.
“Hegde befriended the woman, a divorcee, on
Facebook in January. He introduced himself as Akash Bhat, branch manager of a super market firm. Gradually, they became close and when Hegde found that she was looking for a suitable match, he proposed to her. The woman believed Hegde’s claims that his father was no more and and he lived with his ailing mother and agreed to marry him,” police said.
Between March and April, Hegde was incommunicado. “Two weeks later, he told me his mother had been hospitalised. He sought financial help and without any suspicion, I transferred around Rs 11 lakh to his bank account in different instalments. Since mid-May, he again remained incommunicado and thinking he would be busy with his mother, I did not call him. I grew suspicious only when I found his cellphone was switched off for a long time. He had also blocked me on Facebook,” the woman said.