A 66-year-old man from Odisha’s Kendrapara district, who pretended to be a doctor, was found to have married as many as 14 women including highly placed professionals across the country with the sole intent of physical intimacy and fleecing them financially.

The Commpissionerate police here were virtually stunned to stumble upon the deceptive ploys of the trickster Ramesh Chandra Swain, a native of the Patkura police station area of Kendrapara district. Taking them for a ride on a marriage plan, he swindled crores of rupees from the unsuspecting and economically sound victims.

His victims included among others doctors, police officers, and lawyers. Though he claimed to have duped 14 women, there is every possibility that he might have ensnared many more.

The man got married for the first time in 1982. Later he ditched her to marry a chief medical officer of a corporate house in 2002. In the past two decades, he had managed to deceive at least a dozen women with the marriage alliance.

The modus operandi of the conman is simple. Posting the impressive profile of a senior officer in the union health and family welfare ministry in matrimonial sites, he used to lay the trap to ensnare mostly the financially affluent section of working women. His victims were spread across the country right from Odisha to Delhi,

The accused, reportedly the father of five children from the first two marriages, mostly targeted middle-aged women.

The fraudster was arrested after one of his victims- a teacher in a Delhi-based school, had lodged a complaint at the Mahila police station here.

The accused had got married to the victim in 2018 and had begun to monetarily fleece here. Smelling foul play on the antecedents, the victim had knocked at the police’s doors.

“Swain was arrested on Monday from a rented house in Bhubaneswar’s Khandagiri area. A case has been registered against him at the Mahila police station under Sections 498 (A), 419, 468, 471, and 494 of the IPC. He is being questioned, Bhubaneswar Deputy Commissioner of Police”, Umashankar Dash said.

He is a habitual fraud. We are verifying thoroughly his antecedents and modus operandi as it is most likely that he might have trapped more than 14 women. We are dealing with sensitive case with utmost confidentiality to protect the social stakes of the victims. We have so far been able to come in contact with nine of his victims, Dash added.

It has also been ascertained that he had married a woman official of the Central Armed Police Forces in Punjab and taken Rs 10 lakh from her. The marriage was solemnized at a Gurudwara and he had also swindled the management of the place of worship on the pretext of facilitating the sanction for the establishment of a medical college there.

Swain had a school and college education at Kendrapara College. Later he claimed to have passed degree courses in alternate systems of medicine, laboratory technology, and pharmacy. But the claims are being verified, police said, adding that the last of his victims were from Assam.

The arrested accused also has a history of economic offences. The Tamil Nadu and Hyderabad police had earlier arrested him in separate fraud cases, police added.