For years, a husband-wife duo allegedly lured unsuspecting bachelors in Delhi into the promise of marriage — only to rob them of their money and vanish. Even as the police were hot on their trail, they absconded and evaded arrest for five years. The chase finally ended when a Crime Branch officer, posing as a desperate groom, set a trap and arrested them in Jahangirpuri on Friday, said officers. Police said the couple has two children and was leading a low-profile life, with the man working as an e-rickshaw driver in Jahangirpuri to evade arrest. The duo was wanted in a 2019 case registered under IPC sections 328, 376, 506, and 34, where the complainant alleged that the couple had lured her into joining the fake marriage racket. In her complaint, she claimed she was taken to the house of a man she identified as Rahul (also known as Din Mohammad Mandal) where she was drugged and forcefully married to a man from Haryana. According to the police, some members of the gang were arrested during the initial investigation. However, the key accused managed to escape and remained at large until their arrest on Friday. “Our team came to know that a gang has been active in Delhi for a long time where members target people who are looking to marry. They pretend to be the family members of a girl or would act like an arranged marriage mediator,” said Additional CP (Crime Branch) Sanjay Sain. After convincing their targets, they would extort around Rs 70,000 from them under the pretext of marriage arrangements. The police suspect that several victims may have fallen prey to the alleged fraud over the years. While tracking down victims of the gang and leads that could guide them, Head Constable Surender received a tip-off from a person who was looking to marry a girl and had been approached by a couple who were claiming to arrange his marriage. Acting on the tip-off, he pretended to be “a man desperately looking for a life partner”. When the accused agreed to meet him on Friday, the duo was arrested from Jahangirpuri.
