A 30-year-old man in Karnataka has stated that a woman who promised to marry him and said she had been chosen for the IAS and would soon be appointed a deputy commissioner defrauded him out of Rs 40 lakh.
Parameshwara Hipparagi, of Sindagi in the Vijayapura district of north Karnataka, received a friend request from a profile with the name Manjula K R on June 29, according to his police complaint. They soon became friendly and tight, and in September the woman requested Hipparagi for Rs 700 while claiming that her mother was ill.
Hipparagi used Phone Pe to transfer the funds. As the days passed, the woman continued to assert that she had passed the UPSC test, had been chosen for the IAS, and would soon be appointed deputy commissioner for Hassan. She also said her mother had passed away and requested money from him to finish the last rites.
Hipparagi claimed that because the woman had pledged to wed him, he had sent money whenever she requested it. He made up to Rs 3 lakh in transfers to her account in a single day, the police claim. He was also told that she was being bullied by her uncles and that she wanted to leave the family by paying back the loan her parents had given her.
According to the police, Hipparagi, a labour supervisor who made Rs 30,000 per month working for a private company in Telangana, sold a plot of property he had purchased and borrowed Rs 32 lakh from his father and coworkers while pretending to be in the process of purchasing land.
Hipparagi eventually came to the realisation that he had been caught in a huge trap when he had no other options, and on November 15 he went to the police. Under sections 66C and 66D of the Information Technology Act as well as sections 419 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code, they filed a case of impersonation and cheating.
“We are looking into who tricked Hipparagi. Interesting enough, the woman has continued to call Hipparagi begging him to send money even after he reported the incident to the police, according to a police official. Police say the culprit is a woman who speaks Kannada.
