Love, marriage, deception: Woman leaves string of victims

How a woman duped men by first dating them online, then marrying them, and finally cheating them out of their money and property.

Gurugram: August 7, 2020 was the happiest day of Ajay Kumar’s life, or so he thought.

Ajay Kumar, the woman's seventh victim, has met six men who said they were duped by her (HT photos)

The 31-year-old had met Kajal Gupta on a dating app six months ago, fallen in love, proposed to her, and got engaged. He was smitten, and though his family members objected at first to the match, they were won over by Kajal’s smartness and winning manners. With friends and family cheering and under a shower of flowers, the duo was married with full Hindu rituals in an east Delhi temple in the autumn of 2020. “Happily ever after” seemed well within reach.

“I thanked god for giving me such a wonderful partner; she never demanded anything and always talked about saving money and planning our future and old age,” said Kumar.

Except, it was all a ruse. One year into their marriage – four days after their first anniversary – Kumar came back one evening to find the house cleaned out and his wife missing.

He was the seventh victim of a woman – and this list included a share broker, a financier and a doctor – who duped men by first dating them online, then marrying them, and finally cheating them out of their money and property. As Kumar investigated deeper into the person he was going to share a life with, he realised how little he knew of her – not even her real name. He met other victims, shared stories and realised how foolproof her plan was each time – she would construct a new identity and vanish into thin air.

But in meeting Kumar, she made one mistake. Her straight-and-narrow suburban mathematics teacher of a husband was also a part-time private detective, who spent a year painstakingly putting together the fragments of her long con. She’s still absconding, but police now say they have a handle on her multiple identities, and are close to arresting her. She was last seen in Uttarakhand’s Rudrapur on May 30.

Ballabhgarh deputy commissioner of police Kaushal Singh said that teams were tracking her movements and were close to arresting her. “She has travelled from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh to Dehradun and Nanitial in Uttarakhand,” he said.

Using accounts given by Kumar, some of her victims, her friends and police investigators, HT pieced together how this extraordinary crime unfolded.

Fairytale romance

In February 2020, Kumar, a resident of Ballabhgarh in Faridabad, befriended a woman, who introduced herself as Kajal Gupta. She seemed impressed with him, shared her number, and started chatting on WhatsApp. In July, they decided to meet in east Delhi’s Vinod Nagar. She used to live in a rented flat there, and told Kumar that her parents and relatives lived in different parts of the Capital. She also introduced Kumar to one of her friends, and by next month, he had met 11 people who said they were family to Kajal.

“I fell in love with her and proposed marriage, to which she agreed. Her family members supported our decision and we got married on August 7, 2020,” he said.

Kumar remembered that the initial months were bliss. She told him that she wanted to be a housewife, raise a family, and live a simple life. She got up early, did all the chores, and attended to his relatives and friends. The first wave of the pandemic nixed their plans of a honeymoon, and forced them to spend most of their time in their three-room flat in Ballabhgarh, but he wasn’t complaining. “She was active on social media and her family members often visited us and spent time with her. Everything was going on well,” said Kumar.

In October, she told Kumar that she wanted to bolster the family income by opening a boutique. Kumar readily agreed, and planned to rent a shop in east Delhi’s Laxmi Nagar. Kajal introduced him to a consultant and wholesale cloth supplier, who first asked them to arrange ₹12 lakh to begin the business, and laterasked for ₹20 lakh more. On November 7, Kumar handed over his entire savings of ₹15 lakh to his wife. He took loans from four different banks to pay the rest, he added. Kumar borrowed ₹2 lakh from HDFC Bank, ₹3 lakh from ICICI Bank, and ₹4 lakh from Axis Bank. He is still receiving notices from bank and calls from recovery agents.

DCP Singh said they have got the bank accounts checked and the amount was withdrawn, but Kunal has not paid the banks back.

The boutique, Sanjana Fashions, was launched on November 20 with a small function attended by all of Kajal’s relatives. Kumar was a little apprehensive but on November 25, Kajal brought home ₹1 lakh in cash, and told Kumar that it was profit from the shop, he said. “I was amazed at the business acumen of my wife….I thought my decision to support her business was right. I hoped I would be able to repay the loans soon,” said Kumar.

The betrayal

On July 15, 2021, the couple moved into a two-bedroom apartment above the shop.

Kumar used to run a coaching centre in Ballabhgarh and would commute from Laxmi Nagar to Ballabhgarh every day, and stay at his parents’ house for a couple of days during examinations because the sessions at the centre would run late. He made roughly ₹1.75 lakha month, while the shop made another ₹70,000, according to Kumar.

Everything seemed normal until August 11, 2021. Kumar was in Ballabhgarh, and as usual, called up Kajal. She did not answer. He tried again, but the phone was switched off. Kumar suspected something was amiss. He rushed back to Delhi.

When he reached the apartment, what awaited him came as a shock. All the furniture, property, money and even the leftover stock at the shop was gone. “I enquired from the neighbours. They said Kajal and her family members took away all the stuff saying they are shifting to Faridabad. I could not believe them and went to her parents’ house, but even there the neighbours told me they had also shifted out two days ago,” he said. In all, he lost ₹45 lakh.

He went to the police but no one believed him. It was then that he decided to fall back on his part-time gig as a private detective. He solved over 20 fraud cases in the last three years, Kumar said, adding that it was his dream to work as a detective.

Other victims

In September, he chanced upon his first clue. He started frequenting places where he had met the people who had claimed to be Kajal’s friends and relatives. After two weeks of relentless vigil, he met a woman he’d met before as Kajal’s best friend – at the same fast-food joint she loved. “She was shocked to see me, and tried to make excuses but after I pleaded and cried, she narrated the entire story. After I threatened to get her arrested, she helped me get in touch with Kajal’s earlier husbands,” he said.

Between 2021 and May 15, 2022, he met six men who said they’d been duped by the same woman. Some were happily married now, some still stewing after being cheated, and others bent upon revenge. Kumar said her previous husband lived in Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurugram, Faridabad and Delhi.

Police is taking cognisance...

Through their testimonies, a profile of Kajal started to emerge. There were some common threads in what she told the people he spoke to. She was born in Ludhiana on January 1, 1990, and wanted to be a model but couldn’t due to financial problems.

At 19, she apparently got married for the first time to a man in Delhi in 2010, but stole money and valuables and fled the house in 2012, ostensibly for Mumbai.

In 2014, she married a man, Ajay Gupta, she met on the train from Mumbai. “I wanted to help her as she had no one for support. I kept her in a friend’s place for a few days and asked her to work for me. After four months, she proposed to me and we got married, my family was very fond of her and we were a perfect couple,” Gupta told HT.

“I am into finance and lending money, and always had cash lying in the office and home. On December 3, 2014, she went missing along with ₹30 lakh from the almirah. We tried to search for her but to no avail. We went to her relative’s place but could not find anyone,” said Gupta, now a resident of Noida. He never lodged a case, hoping she’d come back one day. Gupta is now married, and has three children with his wife.

Another man, a 33-year-old stockbroker, said he later realised the woman worked with a gang of 11 people, who posed as friends and family members. “I met her on a dating app and after getting married to her in Delhi, I was duped of ₹40 lakh. Her gang members threatened me and said they would upload compromising pictures and videos of me on social networking sites. I was doing well in my career so I relented,” said the man, requesting anonymity. He now lives in Gurugram with his wife and two children.

The woman’s “best friend”, Anjali, said she got married in February this year and has not been in touch with the woman since. Anjali said the two became friends in 2018. “She was in bad company and her only motive was to dupe people. She loved shopping, spending time on social media, travelling and leading a lavish life. She used to borrow money from people and never returned, she wanted to collect money and settle abroad. She has married six men in my presence and duped all of them,” added Anjali.

Police in pursuit

By September 2021, Kumar could see a pattern.

The woman found men on websites and social media platforms, dated them for a while, and then married them. She would stay for a few months in a shared home, and introduced members of her gang as family members. After winning their trust, she would vanish with whatever valuables she could get.

Police said she owned nine different Aadhaar cards, six PAN cards and 12 voter identity cards.

Armed with this knowledge, Kumar created an alias on the app they met, and saw her – this time, as Sonali Singh, a resident of Noida. “I was following her post and I saw a reel on Instagram. I saw the name of a hotel near Moradabad and I contacted the hotel. The manager told me that she, along with her husband, left early in the morning for Nainital,” Kumar said.

Kumar left for Nainital immediately. On the way, he saw that Singh had shared another video from Nainital with the name of a hotel. Kumar called the hotel again, and was told that Singh was on her honeymoon. “We reached there on May 25 but she had left for Dehradun. I collected all the details, pictures and recorded statements of people and handed them over to Faridabad Police,” he said.

On May 26, police registered a case under sections 420 (cheating), 506 (criminal intimidation), 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code and the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Kumar belongs to the Dalit community.

Kushal Singh, deputy commissioner of police (Ballabhgarh), said that they have formed teams and are conducting raids to arrest her. “We have recovered evidence against her and her gang members. She has duped many men and we are reaching out to all of them,” he said.