Con man marries 72 women from Bihar and West Bengal

Tuesday, Jun 03, 2014

Patna: Police in Bihar have arrested a con man who married 72 women from Bihar and neighbouring West Bengal.

Police said the 35-year-old Mohammad Sijam from northern Bihar’s East Champaran district would trick the gullible village girls by presenting himself as a railway official and promising them a luxurious life. The modus operandi of the cheat was that he would stay in the house of his newly-wed “wife” for a fortnight and then flee with valuables saying he has been transferred to some other place and would return soon — never to do so.

According to the police, he would present himself as a Hindu before Hindu girls and a Muslim before Muslim girls to win their confidence. He was a frequent traveller in the trains dressed as a railway travel ticket examiner (TTE) and cheated six dozen girls in two states. The con man with more than a dozen aliases was arrested from Chiknauta village under Baligaon police station in Vaishali district following a complaint by a local villager.

“I have not come across such a cheat throughout my life. He would marry women narrating concocted stories and would flee claiming he had been transferred elsewhere,” a local police official Raj Kumar Paswan who interrogated the accused told Gulf News over phone on Tuesday. According to the police official, none of his wives knew that he had married other women.

The story came to light after the police arrested him in connection with the mysterious disappearance of a girl from Samastipur district and recovered four cell phones and eight SIM cards from his possession. Soon after that the police kept all his SIM cards and cellphones under surveillance. Subsequently he received many calls from women claiming to be his wives, which brought to light the entire story.

Soon after it was revealed he had been arrested by the police, more than two dozen women claiming to be his wives reached the police station to know the real story and returned home with broken hearts. Further interrogation by the police revealed the entire story.

Police said the arrested man had married women in several districts of Bihar, such as West Champaran, East Champaran, Sitamarhi, Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur, Begusarai, Purnia, Madhepura, Kishanganj, Araria and Katihar. He also had married girls in Midnapur, Asansol, Howrah, Malda and Sialdah districts of West Bengal.

The con man also cheated more than 100 jobless youth by promising to provide them with jobs in Indian railways.

By Lata Rani?Correspondent