Bhubaneswar, Sep 9 : Odhisha Police on Saturday arrested a 26-year-old fraudster for duping an engineer of more than Rs 34 lakh impersonating as a female MBBS student through a fake Facebook account.
The accused, identified as Sreedhar Maharana from Berhampur, was arrested in connection with a case registered at the Cyber Crime and Economic Offence police station here on September 5.
The police have seized several mobile phones, a laptop, debit cards of different banks and one ID card from his possession.
The complainant, Ankit Kumar Gupta, who is a resident of Pokhariput area of Bhubaneswar, works as a junior engineer at NTPC.
“During investigation, we found that Maharana created a fake account on Facebook with a girl’s image as his profile picture. In that fake account, he identified himself as Shivani Panda, a third year MBBS student of a private medical college, whose father works in the Indian Army,” said Goutam Kisan, ACP, Zone-V.
“Later, the accused concocted a story about facing severe financial hardships due to the medical expenditure on his (Shivani’s) ailing father with an intention to gain the victim’s sympathy. Maharana subsequently started asking for money from Gupta under different pretexts, like payment of college fees, treatment of his father and other family members,” Kisan said.
After chatting on WhatsApp for a few days, the victim even proposed to marry ‘Shivani’, which the accused accepted. Taking advantage of the victim’s innocence, Maharana swindled Rs 34,37,500 out of Gupta during the last one year.
During interrogation, the accused claimed that he has completed diploma in engineering.
“We are verifying his claims and looking into the involvement of others, if any, in the fraud. We may seek court’s permission to take the accused on remand for further probe into the matter,” Kisan said.
