PETALING JAYA, Feb 23 — A Delhi conman, who lured more than 18 young women into marrying him before running off with their money, has been arrested by authorities.

Al Jazeera reported that Bibhu Prakash Swain, 67, had married more than 18 times in the past 20 years.

Police officers are also investigating his mobile phone records where he had saved his ‘wives’ contacts as — Madam Delhi, Madam Assam or Madam UP (Uttar Pradesh).

The news portal wrote that he married women in 10 states, defrauded 13 banks in Kerala worth RM41,853,000 through forged credit cards in 2006.

Swain had scoured marriage websites posing as a 51-year-old doctor and persuaded women from all fields — law, medicine, academia to marry him through matrimonial sites like Jeevansathi.com, Shaadi.com and Bharatmatrimony.com.

The Hindustan Times reported that the women Swain reached out to were above the ages of 40 and were struggling to deal with societal pressure, or were divorced or had problems in the family.

Bhubaneswar deputy commissioner police Umashankar Dash told the news portal that he took full advantage of women’s helplessness and laid elaborate traps.

“Though he looked more than 60 in real life, his victims ignored it while considering his government job.

“Though we are yet to know how much money he made out of the victims, initial assessments say he collected ₹2-10 lakh (RM11,000 to RM56,000) from his victims.

“His motive was to marry for money,” he said.

Another police officer told the news portal that he would often disappear after spending days together with his victim, and would tell his ‘wives’ to lend him money, pleading that the government had frozen his bank account.

Senior police official Sanjiv Satpathy told AFP news agency that he was always very persuasive and targeted single, widowed or divorced women in their late 40s, and discovered his multiple identities and bank accounts.

A teacher based in Delhi who was contacted by Swain after seeing her profile on shaadi.com in July 2019 said that when they first met, he spoke very nicely and said that he would take a transfer from Bangalore to Delhi.

“At my age, I thought nothing could be better than this and did not do any check of his antecedents. 

“By the time I knew, it was too late,” she said.