PHAGWARA: It was an NRI wedding that never got real.

A Greece-returned youth Parmjit who had met his ‘dream girl’ through the social media and arrived to wed her in style in a 20-car cavalcade, got a virtual slap on his face when he arrived at the marriage venue at Gobindpura village in Kapurthala district on Wednesday.

The bridegroom never dreamt that anything was amiss as the ‘bride’, Sandeep Kaur, was in constant touch with him, guiding him to the venue, a banquet hall on Nakodar Road, Phagwara. But, the minute the over 100-member baraat reached the place, she signed off.

The bridegroom who happily reached the palace at 11am in a flower-decked luxury car, and a row of baraatis in tow, couldn’t believe his eyes when he found the banquet hall in Hadiabad area locked and nobody from the girl’s family present. It took a few minutes for it to sink in that he had been set up. Devasted by this hoax, the youth’s father fainted.

Pargan Singh, a numbardar of Gobindpura village, who was part of the baraat, said the groom had come in contact with the girl of Kotli village near Nakodar through the social media while he was in Greece. “The boy finalized the date and no one from his family was involved in negotiations for the matrimonial alliance or finalising of arrangements,” he said.

“Celebrations were on at the groom’s place for two days and nearly all his relatives had come to see him wed,” said another relative.

Terming it “the worst humiliation of their life”, some members of the marriage party spread word that they were ready to marry off the boy to any girl from the locality. A girl from a poor family was approached, but even her kin rejected the proposal as they were not sure about the groom’s credentials. The baraat ultimately returned “empty-handed”. By this time, the fraud had begun to add up for Parmjit, and he recollected how the girl had sought money from him on various pretexts. He went to Satnampura police station to lodge a complaint, but finally decided not to bother.