E-Paper
Matchmaker arrested a year after bride runs away with ₹4L from groom’s house
Matchmaking agent arrested for allegedly playing a major role in a bride's robbery a day after the wedding in Mumbai; police still searching for the bride.
Mumbai: A year after a bride fled with gold and cash worth ₹4.5 lakh from the house of the groom a day after the wedding, the matchmaking agent was arrested on Saturday allegedly for playing a major role in the robbery.
The Malad police are still on the lookout for the runaway bride and her ‘aunt’, who were allegedly told to do a contract marriage and leave the next day with the money. The police suspect the agent, and the bride may have duped several people in this manner.
The arrested agent, identified as Kamlesh Yadav, 44, a resident of Silvassa, had introduced Manisha Kashyap to a Malad-based family as they were searching for a bride for their 28-year-old son on April 26, 2022.
According to the police, Yadav told the family, which owns a hospital, that he knew a woman, who was staying with her aunt and was looking to get married.
On April 29, 2022, the couple met and three days later, they married in Malad. A woman identified as Asha Gaikwad, claiming to be Kashyap’s aunt, had insisted on a registered marriage and demanded ₹1.5 lakh, said the police.
A day after the wedding, when the groom left for work, Kashyap accompanied him saying she wanted to go to the market. In the evening when he returned, he did not find his wife home and called her. She told him that she had married him only for the money and was already married with two kids, said the police.
When the family checked their cupboards, they found cash and jewellery worth ₹4.5 lakh missing. In May 2022, they registered a complaint with the police.
“We traced Yadav as he was an acquaintance of another matchmaking agent associated with the family,” said Ravi Adane, senior police inspector of Malad police station.
