Kochi: Army nurse cons suitor with fake online profile, held

KOCHI: Lt Col Smitha V R, a 43-year-old military nurse attached to the Pangode military camp, was arrested by the Central Police on Sunday on charges of defrauding a man, who had registered his name in a matrimonial website, of around Rs 15 lakh.As per the complainant, he had uploaded his profile on the matrimonial website in May 2016 and had come across the profile of a woman named Shruthi Shankar.After the complainant sent a message online expressing interest in the profile and got a positive response, he contacted a phone number claimed to be that of a ‘cousin sister’ of the girl. Following this, a consensus was reached regarding proceeding further with the alliance after the horoscopes were found to be matching.A phone number of the ‘bride-to-be’ was sent to him and they started talking over the phone and ‘fell in love’ mutually. Police officers said the complainant youth was informed that the parents of the girl were settled in Mumbai and she was an MBBS student in Kolkata.There was also a Facebook profile of the ‘girl’ which was fake but believed to be genuine by the complainant. Slowly the girl began demanding money from him after gleaning details about his financial status. By that time, the ‘parents of the girl’ and that of the complainant were also talking to each other.The money demanded by the ‘girl’ was sent to the account of Smitha, whom she referred to as her aunt. Fake photos of the girl were also sent regularly to the complainant but she eluded video chats stating that it was wrong to do so before marriage.Later she told him that she had cancer and was not willing to go ahead with the marriage. The complainant stopped chatting with the ‘girl’ in 2017 and did not file a police complaint because of fear of being ridiculed. But a month ago, a girl identifying herself as Niyathi Narayanan contacted him again. When he realized that it was the same girl who had duped him, he approached police. A probe revealed that the ‘girl’ was Smitha, a military nurse residing at Vettamukku in Thiruvananthapuram, said Central Police circle inspector Vijay Shankar.Smitha told police that she joined the Army in 1997 and is a lieutenant colonel.