Con artist Rinku Vaghela

AHMEDABAD: Rupesh Chavda , 32, of Rajkot faced bleak matrimonial prospects because of his dark complexion, so he paid Rs 1.11 lakh to an agent to find a bride. But the marriage ended with an unfair twist when the con artist who played his wife vanished a week after the wedding. Guarang Merani, a 31-year-old Wankaner resident, had great difficulty in finding a bride because of the skewed sex ratio in his community. Merani paid Rs 1.22 lakh to an agent, got married, and a week later woke up to discover that his wife had deserted him.

The two men had fallen into a trap laid by agents. Chavda registered his marriage in March 2017 with a notary at the Mirzapur court in Ahmedabad. However, even that legal safeguard did not protect him from threats he started receiving two days after the disappearance of his wife, identified as Rinku Vaghela. A man from Patan claimed that Rinku was now his wife and told Chavda to forget her.

Chavda approached the Bhaktinagar police station in Rajkot and then submitted an application of complaint with the Shahpur police station in Ahmedabad naming Rinku and the agents — Kalbhai of Jetpur, Punam Soma of Ahmedabad, and Raju Thakkar of Modasa — as the suspects. Assistant sub-inspector of the Shahpur police station, Girish Patel, said that the man who had notarized the marriage of Chavda and Rinku has stated that he had adhered to all norms. “We will summon Punam Soma soon, ” Patel said. Chavda, who runs a readymade garment business in Rajkot, said he was not getting any younger and sought the help of agents who had been suggested by people he knew.

“I was getting rejected by girls because of my dark complexion,” Chavda said. “My father had died about a year-and-half ago. I had to pay for a wife and got trapped.” Merani’s father, Madan Merani , runs a snack stall at the Wankaner railway station. He said: “We were put in touch with a woman called Farida by one of our community members. We met the girl who identified herself as Neha.” The agents had the marriage notarized at the Mirzapur court three months ago. “We were shocked to find Neha missing one morning,” Merani said. Police said the cases are eerily similar. “We are investigating the possibility of a racket, run by a web of agents across the state, in which brides are promised for money,” a police official said.

