MNC professional, hailing from Kolkata, working in Mumbai, responds to ad posted by 'businessman', looking for an alliance, gets him arrested on unearthing the con and finds out he's a tea vendor in Kolkata



Kolkata resident Gaurav Shaw makes his matrimonial profile, with false information about him being rich, which a Mumbai woman falls for

An affluent family from Kolkata, owning several bungalows, cars and a private jet, is looking for a bride for their 30-year-old son, Gaurav Shaw, a graduate handling his father’s business — impressed with this profile, a woman working with an MNC in Mumbai contacted the youth and arranged a meet. It was quite a scalding shock for her soon after when she found out that he was not a young businessman, but a chaiwala owning a stall at Dum Dum station.



She contacts him, and soon, they start chatting on Facebook and WhatsApp regularly, with the friendship blooming into love

Picture (im)perfect

Having decided to get married, Shaw made a profile last July on a matrimonial site. While preparing the profile, the idea of a con struck him — he uploaded his own pictures with the correct contact information but weaved a story about him being from a rich Kolkata family running a successful business. And it worked when a woman working with a multinational company in Mumbai contacted him after going through his profile.

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He visits Mumbai and spins a larger web, but she soon finds out about his lies, does a background check on him and realises he’s a fraud

Soon, the victim added him as a friend on Facebook and WhatsApp and they started chatting regularly.

The friendship soon turned into love and the two decided to get married.

Shaw then came to Mumbai sometime towards the end of the year and managed to make the victim more moony-eyed by weaving a story about how he belonged to a filthy rich family that “didn’t know how much money was there in their own accounts”, that they lived a royal life in Kolkata, had a chartered plane as well as a huge bungalow in Andheri.



When he starts blackmailing her, she approaches the police, who arrest him and reveal that he is a chaiwala. Illustration/Ravi Jadhav

Future tense

As their relationship continued long distance, the victim started noticing how frequently he lied about trivial things, which started making her suspicious and she decided to look into his background. She searched for information on him on social media and other sites, but failed to find anything to back his claims. She then searched for his chartered plane based on the number he had given her, but even that came up naught.

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Put off, she started avoiding him. Shaw, however, refused to let her be and started blackmailing her with some of their pictures together that he had clicked. Unable to take the torture any longer, she approached the Powai police and lodged a complaint against him.

Probe revelations

Investigation revealed that Shaw sold tea at Kolkata’s Dum Dum station, and his father was a soap wholesaler.

An officer told mid-day, “After receiving the complaint, we registered an FIR against Shaw under sections 417 (cheating), 354 (criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 354c (capturing the image of a woman engaging in a private act) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code, and arrested him from Kolkata.

The two were in touch since July 2016. After she found out that he had cheated her with false information, she started ignoring him. Shaw, however, kept harassing her. That’s when she approached us.”