Preeja Prasad By Express News Service BENGALURU: Keeping up with the digital age, fraudsters have now turned to social media to cheat women into paying them large sums of money. Women fall victim to online ‘lovers’ through social media sites. After promising marriage they demand large sums of money, for which the women take loans, to find that the men are already married. The city’s women’s helpline, Vanitha Sahayavani under Parihar at the Commissioner of Police (COP), has been seeing around five cases a month. According to the city’s cybercrime police station, 127 cases have been registered under the social media category this year, out of which 31 are matrimonial fraud cases. Earlier this year, a 30-year-old met a claimed software engineer through a matrimonial site. After dating for four months, the man asked for money, citing medical reasons. The woman took a bank loan of Rs 25 lakh assuming that it was for the treatment. It was later found that the man was already married and a case was registered against him. Another similar incident took place, where a 27-year-old woman met a man through Facebook. After promising to marry her, the man asked for Rs 30 lakh, for which the woman took a Rs 3 lakh bank loan and the rest was borrowed from moneylenders. After investigation, it was found that the man was already married and had a child too. “He had denied taking any money. The case is now pending in the court,” said Sandhya Rani, a senior counsellor at the Parihar. Another victim A 30-year-old victim from Hong Kong, who works at an MNC in the city, was in an online relationship with a man who posed to be a businessman. When he cut contact from her, she contacted police commissioner T Suneel Kumar via email. It was found that he was a Class 7 dropout and a bike mechanic in J P Nagar.

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