A 22-year-old was detained by the Yavatmal police for allegedly defrauding a 44-year-old Delhi-based doctor of nearly Rs 2 crore by posing as a woman.
“On his Facebook and Instagram pages, Anil Mankar pretended to be a woman from Mumbai, identifying himself as Ananya Singh Oberai. After befriending the doctor in Delhi, he had been chatting to him on the phone for the previous few months. His voice has a girlish tone to it, thus no one would suspect him “Superintendent of Police Dilip Bhujbal of Yavatmal remarked.
Mankar, a class XII dropout, had created and updated a Facebook and Instagram account in the name of ‘Ananya Singh’ nearly five years ago.
After contacting the imposter on social media, the victim was told that “she” came from a wealthy family and had businesses in Dubai, according to the complainant. The impostor told the victim last month that “her” sister had been kidnapped and that the kidnappers had demanded a ransom of Rs 2 crore.
“Mankar concocted a narrative and told the doctor that he runs a hotel in Dubai but was having financial difficulties because his sister had been kidnapped and he needed money to rescue her,” Bhujbal added. He had previously purchased gold jewellery from two shops in Yavatmal and had arranged for the doctor to settle the bill from Delhi.
After believing the kidnapping tale, the doctor traveled to Yavatmal on August 12 to pay over Rs 2 crore to Mankar, who had delegated himself to collect the money on Ananya’s behalf as the girl in the social media profile.”
Later, the accused called the victim to inform him that “her” sister had been released. According to authorities, he then ordered the victim to deposit Rs 7,20,000 into a bank account he mentioned. Mankhar shut down all of his social media accounts and turned off his phone after the doctor moved the money to a bank account on August 27, according to Bhujbal.
“However, as the so-called Ananya went silent, the doctor became suspicious. So he showed up two days ago.
He approached me at Yavatmal with a lawyer from Delhi and another from Nagpur. Our cyber cell members traced down the two phone numbers given by the doctor and apprehended Mankar in the city. Later, he admitted the truth. We were able to retrieve Rs 1.78 crore from his home, as well as the gold jewellery he had gotten the doctor to pay for,” Bhujbal said.