Desire to settle abroad turns into nightmare for 7 Punjab bachelors duped on pretext of marriage

Ludhiana: A mother-daughter duo from Punjab's Ludhiana district found a novel way to dupe prospective bachelor emigrants to Canada by exploiting their eagerness to settle abroad.

For seven aspiring bachelor 'emigrants', it was a double delight of getting married and settling in Canada. But it did not turn out to be so. They neither got the bride nor the emigration to Canada but instead ended up losing lakhs of rupees, police investigation has revealed.

Sukhdarshan Kaur, who was arrested recently along with two others, would allegedly use the photographs and videos of her 24-year-old daughter Harpreet as a prospective bride for those wanting to get married and settle abroad.

Harpreet went to Canada on student visa and was currently there on work permit.

According to Doraha SHO Inspector Akash Dutt, seven victims have been identified and have come forward with their statements to the police so far.

The modus operandi allegedly adopted by Sukhdarshan and other accused in the case was the same, he said.

Sukhdarshan would follow the matrimonial advertisements in newspapers and then approach the families of the prospective grooms. She would tell them that her daughter Harpreet lived in Surrey, Canada on work permit after having studied there.

Police said Sukhdarshan would fix her daughter's 'marriage' with those prospective grooms who wanted to settle in Canada but were unable to do so due to various reasons and limitations.

The mother would make her daughter speak to the prospective grooms via video calls and then go ahead and hold engagement ceremonies of her daughter after reaching her 'fiances' homes with sweets.

She would claim that she had incurred huge expenses on sending her daughter abroad, and had accrued a lot of debt.

She would allegedly demand around Rs 20 lakh from every family she cheated. The final amount settled would be between Rs 15 lakh and Rs 18 lakh. All the payments were taken through bank transfers apparently to gain the confidence of the people she allegedly cheated.

Just because of their eagerness to settle in Canada, none of the victims tried to cross check the facts about Harpreet, police said. Some of them even sold their land, animals and took loans to pay Sukhdarshan.

Even some 'engagement' ceremonies were held through video calls.

Police said Harpreet's mother would promise that a wedding would be solemnised within a few months after 'engagement', but later on kept giving excuses to delay it or even stopped taking calls.

The lid on the modus operandi adopted by the accused over past more than a year was blown off when another such 'engagement' was to take place at a hotel in Doraha here on July 10, which involved a young man from Khanna here.

While like in other cases where other young men were allegedly duped, Harpreet would not be present physically in this case too, and instead her framed photo was kept. In some cases, she joined through video call.

However, the hotel where this 'proxy engagement' was to take place was raided on a tip-off to the police from another man hailing from a village in Bathinda, who claimed that a WhatsApp voice note meant for Harpreet was mistakenly shared by her mother to him.

In that voice note, details of the fraudulent practice which had been adopted to dupe him and other men was allegedly being discussed as well as the 'pending' money that had to be collected from the man who hailed from Khanna.

Police said a case under BNS sections 316(2) (criminal breach of trust), 318 (4) (cheating), and 61 (2) (criminal conspiracy) has been registered at the Doraha police station.

Besides Sukhdarshan, the police have also arrested two more accused in the case, and further investigation is on.