Dhanya Mary Varghese speaking in a TV show. (Source: YouTube screen-grab) Dhanya Mary Varghese speaking in a TV show. (Source: YouTube screen-grab)

Malayalam actor Dhanya Mary Varghese was detained by police in connection with a fraud case. She was arrested more than a month after her husband John Jacob’s father was held by police for allegedly duping customers of his real estate firm. Dhanya Mary Varghese has been arrested for financial fraud of Rs 130 crore, said police on Friday.

Jacob Samson is the chairman of Samson and Sons Builders and Developers Limited, which he runs with his two sons John and Sam. He was held by district Crime Branch in Thiruvananthapuram earlier for defrauding the investors with the promise of high-interest rates.

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Varghese, her husband John and his brother Samuel, were on the run after complaints filed by clients, who had booked apartments from Samson Builders, owned by John’s family, but the company failed to honour the contracts.

Her father-in-law, Jacob Samsun, a former state government employee, was arrested last month, and the trio picked up from Tamil Nadu’s Nagercoil on Thursday night and brought here on Friday.

According to police, Varghese, even though not a director in the company, had misled clients by stating on the company website that she was a director.

Samson Builders was in the process of constructing apartments and villas and had collected about Rs 100 crore from various clients and another Rs 30 crore from investors offering high rates of returns.

For the past several months, clients were after the company and following several deadlines for handing over the apartments being broken, many of them approached police and filed a case of cheating.

Dhanya made her acting debut with Tamil film Thirudi in 2006 and later debuted in Malayalam with Nanma in 2007. She has acted in about 20 films, most of them in Malayalam. She got engaged to John in 2011 and the couple got hitched in 2012 at Mateer Memorial Church, Trivandrum. Following her marriage, she quit acting and has a son named Johan.

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