Bengaluru (DHNS): This man had a whale of a time as a prospective bridegroom. He cheated no less than 12 women by posing as a widower looking to remarry. His 12th victim was lucky enough to get him arrested.
D M Ramakrishna alias Anil Prasad, 46, a native of T Narasipura in Mysuru, was arrested by the Banashankari police after he stole the gold jewellery of a woman on the pretext of introducing her to his parents as his “bride-to-be”.
In a complaint she filed at the Banashankari police station on June 6, 2015, the woman narrated how Ramakrishna cheated her.
She said she had contacted him after seeing a matrimonial advertisement in a regional language daily. Ramakrishna, the purported advertiser, was looking for a bride, saying his wife had died in an accident. The ad listed his contact number.
The woman called on the number and talked to a man who introduced himself as Ramakrishna. They then met twice at the BDA complex in Banashankari. He told her he liked her but wanted to introduce her to his parents so that they also approve of her and schedule the wedding.
Ramakrishna then suggested they meet on May 8, 2015, and asked her to wear a lot of gold jewellery so that she is “presentable” to his parents. They met at the BDA complex in Banashankari, from where he took her to Hotel Maurya at Majestic where they had breakfast.
Then they went to Mantri Square mall in Malleswaram. He took her to a cafe in the mall where he ordered Pepsi for her. As soon as she gulped it down, she fainted. After gaining consciousness, to her utter shock, she wasn’t at Mantri mall but at the BDA complex they had met a while ago and her gold valuables were missing, too.
There was no sight of Ramakrishna. She tried calling him, but his mobile phone was not reachable. Then she realised she had been taken for a ride.
Based on the woman’s complaint, the police tracked Ramakrishna’s mobile phone and caught him. During the interrogation, it was found that he is wanted for a total of 12 similar offences across Karnataka. He planned the crimes meticulously, a senior police officer said.
But what intrigued the police was how Ramakrishna took the unconscious woman from Mantri mall in Malleswaram to the BDA complex in Banashankari — a distance of more than 10 km?
Ramakrishna said onlookers at the Mantri mall did ask him about the unconscious woman and he told them she was his wife who had fainted because of viral fever. Without much difficulty, he hailed an auto-rickshaw and dropped her at the BDA complex even as she remained unconscious. Before that, he took out all her gold jewellery, the officer added. Police said they had recovered around 150 grams of gold valuables from him.