JOIN USA prominent page 3 figure, Deepti Reddy, who took the high-profile society of the city by storm for years, had a posh house at Guntur and was a proud owner of the latest version of gadgets and a swanky Hyundai – i20 car.
The modus operandi was to post her photo as a ‘bride’ on websites and trap “desirable” groom-to-be. Police said Deepti has been in the con game since she was 16, and her mother Pushpalata lent her all support.
Mother of two, Deepti confessed to have cheated a dozen men and managed to “earn” a huge collection of jewellery and gifts worth over Rs 1.8 crore by way of weddings. Her calculations, however, went wrong when she befriended some Visakhapatnam-based software engineer, who chased her from place to place pestering her to return the costly gifts.
The police received complaints from five to six of her “husbands” and laid trap for her at a posh hotel at Jubilee Hills and nabbed her when she was about to tie knot with a 35-year-old Mumbai-based bank executive. The sessions court here has remanded her to judicial custody.
While some of her “husbands” were from film industry, many others were nondescript merchant bankers, pilots, navy officers, software engineers and NRIs. The list includes a visiting professor from the UK, and a Dubai-based oil executive.
Even if the charges that include immoral trafficking and cheating are proved she will get one-year sentence, but with remissions she could be out in six months. “I have not cheated anyone. I told every new ‘groom’ about my past unhappy marriages and also showed the divorce paper,” says Deepti.
Investigations revealed that she approached men through online only. Every time she got at least 10 to 15 applications of which she chose the wealthiest.
Deepti, who had worked in travel agencies in Hyderabad and Bangalore, also procured divorce papers from a family court in little known town of north Karnataka. “Most of them, who wanted my company, were married and they invited me to places like Singapore and Dubai. I lived with them as their life partner,” Deepti told the police.
She, along with her mother Pushpalata, managed the relations and never let out the truth of “multi-marriage” she was tied with. Among her “victims” is a 28-year-old software engineer and close aide of a Tollywood actor.