A 42-year-old woman from Ahmedabad was allegedly duped of ₹13.2 lakh by a fraudster posing as a prospective groom on Shaadi.com. The accused, identified as Saeed Rehan, created a fake profile and lured the woman into a relationship before extorting money under various pretexts.

According to the FIR filed at Vejalpur police station, the complainant, Dr Shaukat Ali Qadri, stated that his daughter Sana Qadri, a senior software developer residing had created a profile on Shaadi.com in September 2024 in search of a life partner. She came across the profile of Saeed Rehan, who claimed to be based in the United States and owned a gold mine in South Africa.

Series of transactions

The two began communicating on the platform before moving their conversations to WhatsApp. Sana also spoke to someone posing as Rehan’s father Rehman, which further reinforced her trust in him.

In October 2024, Rehan requested ₹5 lakh, claiming he needed the funds to settle a business transaction in India. He provided a Bank of Baroda account number for the transfer. Over the following months, he fabricated multiple excuses to extract additional funds, including an accident and a consignment stuck in transit. Between November 2024 and January 2025, he convinced Sana to transfer a total of ₹13.2 lakh into the same bank account.

On January 1, 2025, Rehan informed Sana that he had arrived in Chandigarh and would stay there for three months. However, when Sana and her father requested his address to meet him, he avoided conversations and eventually stopped responding altogether.

Realising that she had been scammed, Sana reported the fraud to the cyber crime helpline 1930 and later filed an official complaint with the Vejalpur police station on Tuesday.

Based on the complaint, the police have registered an FIR under various sections of cheating and cyber fraud against both accused right now and the authorities are now investigating the bank transactions, WhatsApp communications, and IP addresses used by the accused.