Woman poses as man, tortures ‘wife’ for dowry
A 25-year-old woman allegedly dressed up as a man for four years, duped two women into marrying her and tormented one of them for dowry, police in Uttarakhand’s Haldwani said on Thursday.
Sweety Sen, a resident of Dhampur in UP’s Bijnore, was “always a tomboy” and started posing as a man, Krishna, in 2013, said Nainital’s senior superintendent of police Janmejay Khanduri. She was arrested on Wednesday on charges of impersonation, fraud and forgery.
“The lady used to pose as a man in terms of looks and enticed women on Facebook and later married them,” Khanduri said.
Police said Sen created a Facebook account in the name of Krishna Sen in 2013 and uploaded photos posing as a man. She then allegedly chatted with several women on social media. In 2014, Sen travelled to Haldwani’s Kathgodam area to meet a woman she befriended on the social media website. She told the Uttarakhand woman that she was the son of a businessman from Aligarh, said the police. The two women got married later that year, and shortly afterwards, Sen allegedly started beating up the woman, who holds two masters degrees, for dowry. Sen also allegedly took ₹8.5 lakh from the woman’s family, police said.
“We got married in 2014, she used to behave like a man, used to drink, smoke and also abuse. She used to threaten to kill me after she married another woman,” the victim told news agency ANI.
Two years later, Sen lured another woman from Uttarakhand’s Kaladhungi town and married her in April 2016, police said. The “second wife” was present during Sen’s first wedding as a guest. Sen rented a room in Tikoniya area of Haldwani and kept both his “wives” there, police said.
“The girl from Kaladhungi came to know that Krishna was not a man, but the latter bought her silence with the promise of money. The girl from Kathgodam lodged a report with the Haldwani Police listing the dowry demands and threats after which the police made the arrest,” Khanduri said.
A police official quoted Sen saying that she had been dressing up as a boy since her childhood, and had cut her hair to look the part.