Bhubaneswar (Odisha): Police have traced three more wives of a 66-year-old conman from Odisha, taking the total number of his wives to 17, police said on Wednesday. The man managed to marry middle-aged, educated and well-to-do women of various states and later duped them, the police officer added. It was earlier alleged that the man had married 14 times. He is currently in judicial custody.
The police officer said the accused, who approached women under the fake identity of a doctor, had also tied the knot with a charted account from Chhattisgarh, a physician from Assam and a highly educated lady of Odisha.
Three more wives of the fake doctor have been identified," Bhubaneswar Deputy Commissioner of Police U S Dash told reporters here.
His mobile phones will be sent to the forensic lab and his financial transactions will be probed, Dash said.
The sexagenarian Ramesh Chandra Swain, who acquired different names like Dr Bibhu Prakash Swain and Dr Ramani Ranjan Swain, is from a coastal village in Odisha's Kendrapara district.
Swain was an expert in persuading women and lured college teachers, even hard-boiled policewomen and captious lawyers, as he went about striking middle-aged women desperate for companionship with cupid's arrow. Swain befriended women on matrimonial websites and deftly concealed his matrimonial status.
However, his luck run out on Valentine Day on Monday after 38 years when he was arrested by the police based on the allegation of his latest wife from Delhi whom he married in 2020. Swain got married for the first time in 1982, and the last in 2020. His last marriage to a teacher was solemnised at an Arya Samaj temple in Delhi.
He, however, rejected the accusations. "I have not married all these women and I am indeed a doctor," Swain asserted while being escorted to the court.
He allegedly duped his wife from Punjab of Rs 10 lakh, and the Gurudwara, where his marriage was solemnized, of Rs 11 lakh with the promise of facilitating setting up a medical college. He was earlier arrested twice for cheating unemployed youth and loan fraud in Hyderabad in 2010 and Ernakulam in 2006, police said.
READ: Fake 'King of Love' who married, duped 14 women from 7 states arrested
(PTI inputs)
