India police

An Indian police  team has arrested Ogueri Emmanuel Chinonso (28), Tope Oluwole (31) and Osarumwense Smart (30), all Nigerians in a romance scam.

The three who live in Greater Noida in the Indian capital, were found to have swindled a software engineer based in the city of Pune, in the state of Maharashtra .

One of the Nigerians had posed as  a medical practitioner  living  in the UK  on a dating website and hooked the Indian engineer. The Nigerian, along with his accomplices overtime duped the Indian 38.22 lakh.($57,335)

The suspects were brought to Pune on  Friday evening by a police team led by senior police inspector Sunil Pawar . They were produced in a city court on Saturday.

The woman, a resident of Pimple Nilakh, had lodged a complaint with the Chatushrungi police station saying that someone pretending to be a prospective groom had duped her of Rs 38.22 lakh. The suspect was allegedly operating a profile on a matrimonial website in the name of a UK-based doctor Rajesh Kumar. Police had also booked his accomplice identified as Martin.

The woman and the ‘doctor’ had exchanged phone numbers and email addresses after getting in touch on the website. They started chatting with each other. The suspect told the woman that he was serving in the peace-keeping force in Afghanistan as an army surgeon.

He claimed that he urgently needed money and urged the woman to transfer some to his bank account. He promised her that he would transfer Rs 1.5 crore ($157, 514) to her bank account once the mission was over.

In a span of over five months, the software engineer transferred Rs 38.22 lakh to the suspect’s account. Gradually, she realized that the ‘groom’ was cheating her.