PUNE: Three Nigerian nationals were convicted on Saturday by a judicial magistrate court and sentenced to three years of rigorous imprisonment for duping a woman software engineer of Rs 38.22 lakh in a matrimony fraud case in 2016.
Judicial Magistrate (First Class) MM Raut also imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on each of the three convicts, Ogeuri Emmanual Chinaso (25), Osaramense Smart (30) and Tope Oluwoly (31), who resided in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, at the time of their arrest.
The woman had lodged an FIR with Chatuhshringi police station following which Pune city police Cybercrime Cell had arrested the Nigerian nationals.
According to police, the woman had created her profile for marriage on a well-known matrimonial site. One Dr Rajesh Kumar, who claimed to be an orthopaedic surgeon from the United Kingdom, accepted her profile and they both shared their details and started chatting on Facebook, WhatsApp and email in August 2015.
Police officials further said that after one month of chatting, Dr Rajesh told the lady that he has received a secret fund of Rs 1.5 crore and that he can’t keep that amount with him. Therefore, he wished to send it to her. And as a pretext of receiving that courier, she was asked to deposit amount of Rs 38.22 lakh in 16 different accounts of six different banks. The accused and his accomplice had told her that the amount was required for paying custom duty, payment to airport authorities and the RBI. However, after getting the amount, the accused persons stopped receiving her calls. She realised she was cheated and approached the police.
After technical analysis and a chase of 15 days in Delhi, a team led by Senior Police Inspector Sunil Pawar, API Sanjay Thenge, PSI Pravin Swami and policemen Aslam Attar, Rajkumar Jaba and staff of Cyber Cell Pune, nabbed the accused.
Police seized three laptops, 10 mobiles, 20 SIM cards, eight dongles used for the crime, from their house search.
