MUMBAI: A 40-year-old Andheri woman thought she had found a perfect match when a man she had befriended on Facebook proposed marriage. But before they could tie the knot, he claimed to have been hit by a series of disasters. The woman sent him Rs 1.7 lakh to help him through the bad times until she found out that he had married someone else.
Sakinaka police registered a case of cheating against Firoz Sayyad from Bihar on Thursday after the woman filed a complaint.
In 2016, the woman, who works as a customer care executive with a private firm, received a friendship request from Sayyad, who runs a business dealing in sand. The two got talking in 2019. Sayyad conveyed a message through her friend that he wanted to marry her, but she turned him down. At this, Sayyad made video calls to tell her claiming to have slashed his wrist and finger. On another occasion, he claimed to have overdosed on sleeping pills and got hospitalised.
"The woman agreed to tie the knot. In 2020, Sayyad and his brother were to come to Mumbai to meet her parents, but a national lockdown was imposed due to the pandemic," a police officer said. Shortly afterwards, Sayyad told her that his mother and brother had passed away. Later, he said he had been impacted due to Delhi riots. And lastly, he claimed to have contracted Covid-19. He blamed the pandemic for his business suffering losses.
As they had planned to get married, the woman didn't th-ink twice before helping him out. Between 2020 and 2021, she transferred to him Rs 1.7 lakh in installments. In her complaint, the woman said she saw congratulatory messages on Sayyad's Facebook timeline in December 2021 and learnt that he had got married. When she asked Sayyad about it, he claimed that his social media account had been hacked and he was still a bachelor. When she asked him to return her money, he refused and threatened to upload her private images online. He warned her that he had political links and a criminal case could not be lodged against him, said the FIR.
