NEW DELHI: Odisha police has arrested a 66-year-old man in Bhubaneswar, who allegedly had married at least 27 women in 10 states including Assam.
Bibhu Prakash Swain was arrested recently on the basis of a police complaint lodged by one of his wives under sections 498 (A), 419, 468, 471 and 494 of the Indian Penal Code.
Swain allegedly defrauded 13 banks in Kerala of Rs 1 crore through 128 forged credit cards in 2006, and cheated people in Hyderabad of Rs 2 crore, promising seats in MBBS courses for their children, HT reported.
Besides marring a doctor in central Assam’s Tezpur, he tied the nuptial knot with at least 26 other women including an assistant commandant of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, a chartered accountant from Chhatisgarh, teachers of a New Delhi-based school, two advocates of the Supreme Court and the Delhi high court, a government employee from Indore and an officer of the Kerala Administrative Service in the last three and a half years.
According to police Swain targeted his victims through matrimonial sites like Jeevansathi.com, Shaadi.com and Bharatmatrimony.com.
He posed as Professor Bidhu Prakash Swain, a 51-year-old working as deputy director-general of health education and training with an annual income of Rs 50-70 lakh.
“Though he looked more than 60 in real life, his victims ignored it while considering his government job. Swain took full advantage of the women’s helplessness and laid elaborate traps,” HT quoted Bhubaneswar DCP Umashankar Dash as saying.
He primarily did this for their money, and some sexual pleasure, said a senior police official.
Swain was always very persuasive and only targeted successful single, widowed or divorced women in their late 40s.
A few “happy and satisfying days into the marriage”, the police said, Swain used to make excuses to borrow his new wives’ money or jewellery to help him with an emergency.
He then moved on to his next target, hoping that the women’s circumstances — as a single, widowed or divorced woman who had remarried in a conservative society — would scare them off going to the police.
Swain saved his wives’ contacts — as Madam Delhi, Madam Assam or Madam UP — named after the places where they stayed.
When the first FIR was lodged in July 2021 and police started tracking his calls, they were intrigued to see his footprints all over the country, starting from Tezpur in Assam to Kerala.
By the time they started tracking him, he would often switch off his mobile phones.
Last year, the police team almost got lucky when they reached Tezpur, but found he had already left.
But analyzing his call records, they knew that he would be back in Bhubaneswar every 3-4 months and had to patiently wait while tracking his mobile phone.
Swain, born in a small village in Odisha, first married in 1978 and has three children — two of them doctors and one a dentist — with his first wife.
Trained as a lab technician, he fell out with his family and moved to Bhubaneshwar where he started introducing himself as a doctor and ultimately married a doctor, his second wife, in 2002.