Mortgaging mangalasutra to show for ‘salary’, a jobless woman triggers a chain of concocted tales

First, she lied to her family about landing a job as a fashion designer and later, left the Madhapur police groping in the dark by lodging a complaint of chain-snatching.

But it was not long before the cops realised that the 25-year-old woman neither had a job nor was her chain snatched.

It was a cock and bull story that she had been weaving all along just to placate her husband and in-laws, who were pressurising her to find employment and support the family.

To convince them, she got into a routine of going to office — a fashion studio in Madhapur — and returning home by 6.30 p.m. Her family had no inkling that she whiled away her time on the streets, bus stands, railway stations and the busy lanes of Koti and Sultan Bazaar before it was time to ‘call it a day’.

Asked about her salary after a month, she informed her in-laws that she would get paid only on completion of two months of employment.

And at the end of the second month, she spun another drama — that her 2.5 tola gold mangalasutra was snatched at a bus stop by ‘two unidentified men’, who ‘fled’ towards Jubilee Hills.

In reality, however, she had mortgaged her chain to a money lender for an amount of over ₹40,000 to show as salary to her family.

The woman, along with her husband, then approached the Madhapur police and lodged a complaint of chain-snatching on February 3.

After registering a case, the cops rushed to the crime spot to investigate.

But it was within a few hours that the officers realised the woman had taken them for a ride; there was no chain-snatching incident!

On being questioned what forced her to lodge a fake complaint, the 25-year-old poured her heart out to the police, telling them how her in-laws and husband had been forcing her to get a job and that she had failed at that.

The police later counselled her family and the woman withdrew the case. “On enquiry, we came to know that she had given a false statement due to family problems,” police said.