The Bhubaneswar Commissionerate police have arrested a medical officer of a corporate house on the charge of entering into criminal conspiracy with a 66-year-old man from Odisha’s Kendrapara district, who pretended to be a doctor and married as many 14 women including highly placed professionals across the country to fleece them financially.

While Ramesh Chandra Swain, a school dropout and assumed the identity of a doctor, Kamala Swain arrested from Jharkhand has been found out to be a real doctor, posted at the corporate house’ office in Jamnagar in Gujarat. She had got married to the conman in 2002 and was the legally married wife of the much-married man, said the commissionerate police officials.

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The medical officer was found to have entered into criminal conspiracy in the matrimonial fraud committed by Ramesh Swain. After prima facie evidence was found, she was arrested and is being quizzed. Police will seek her custodial remand to further delve into the case; an official of commissionerate police here said refusing to divulge further details.

It is pertinent to note here that Swain (66) from Odisha’s Kendrapara district was arrested on 14 February. Masquerading as a doctor, he had married as many as 27 women including highly placed professionals across the country. He preyed on mostly single and widows, by impersonating a doctor working with the Central government and defrauding them for money and other valuables.

Swain conned his victims by fake identity of Dr. Bijayshree Ramesh Kumar, Dr Bidhu Prakash Swain and Dr Ramani Ranjan Swain. All these 27 marriages were solemnized after 2018. The victims identified so far hailed from Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Odisha.

Five women from Odisha were also deceived and got married to the conman. All the victimized women were either unmarried or widowed and were above 45 years of age. His victims also included a Supreme Court lawyer, a Kerala Administrative Officer, chartered accountant, commandant in a paramilitary force, deputy general manager of an insurance company and doctors in 10 different States.

The 5-ft-2 inch-tall diminutive man has not passed out matriculate. The man had his first marriage in 1982 and got remarried to a chief medical officer of a corporate house in 2002. Though born in 1956, he tampered the year of birth to 1971 by forged documents. He married 25 women only after 2018 through matrimonial platforms.

His amorous ploys to deceive highly educated women had left the cops here dumbfounded. After months of verification and search operation, the conman Ramesh was arrested on 14 February from a rented house in Bhubaneswar on the basis of a complaint lodged by one of the victims, a Delhi-based teacher.