Voices Dr Vikram Sampath Preeti Shenoy S Vaidhyasubramaniam Ravi Shankar Luke Coutinho Mata Amritanandamayi MAGAZINE Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment NEW DELHI october 25 2026 SUNDAY PAGES 12 Married to Menace AI is now the deadly tool of marriage scamsters to trick victims into parting with millions for love By Sreejith Vellu Madhom and Tanisha Saxena T he uniform in the photographs was never real. The AI software that generated it didn’t need a tailor, a police station or an appointment letter. According to the Ahmedabad Crime Branch, in May this year, a 27-year-old man identified as Himanshu Panchal, used AI tools to generate pictures of himself in a Gujarat Police sub-inspector’s uniform and posted them on Shaadi.com, Jeevansathi, Bumble, and Hinge. He backed up the fake image with forged documents and a series of invented legal and financial troubles. But the deception did not last. One of the women did what the technology was designed to defeat: she checked. According to a news agency report, she grew suspicious, scrutinised his claims and discovered that he was not a police officer. She approached the police and registered a complaint. Fortunately, she had not given him any money By the time he was arrested, he had reportedly . cheated at least 21 hopeful brides across Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra. Weeks later, in Kanpur, the same technology was used on a larger scale. Police arrested the alleged mastermind behind three fake marriage bureaus that reportedly advertised AI-generated images of attractive women on social media. Interested men were directed to a call-centre-style operation involving 23 female telecallers, each working towards weekly collection targets. The Man in Uniform According to the Ahmedabad Crime Branch, 27-year-old Himanshu Panchal used AI to create images of himself dressed as a Gujarat Police sub-inspector. He uploaded them to matrimonial and dating platforms, including Shaadi.com, Jeevansathi, Bumble, and Hinge, bolstering his claims with forged documents and fabricated personal troubles. By the time police arrested him, he had reportedly cheated at least 21 women across four states. His deception unravelled when one prospective bride grew suspicious, investigated his claims and discovered that he was not a police officer. Brides Made by AI In Kanpur, the promise of finding a life partner became the bait in a carefully organised fraud. Police arrested the alleged mastermind behind three fake matrimonial bureaus that advertised AI-generated photographs of attractive women on social media. Interested men were channelled into a call-centre-style operation staffed by 23 female telecallers, who worked towards weekly collection targets. Victims were charged registration, verification, and other processing fees. More than 1,700 men were reportedly cheated through the operation, with money traced to 11 linked bank accounts. The investigation began after a Barabanki man complained that he had lost nearly `4 lakh. The men were charged registration fees, profile-verification fees and other processing charges. More than 1,700 men had reportedly been cheated in this way Police traced the . money to 11 linked bank accounts. The case came to light after a man from Barabanki complained that he had lost nearly `4 lakh to the fraudulent agency within a few months, having been promised help in finding a spouse. In another case, a man named Sanket created a fake female profile on an online matrimonial website using Instagram photographs of attractive women. Posing as Mumbai-based medical practitioner ‘Dr Sayali Patil’, he targeted a doctor and his father. He used AI voicechanging technology to sound like a woman during phone calls and impersonated fictitious family members, including brothers ‘Lokesh’ and ‘Manmat Desale’ and a retired uncle. Later, posing in person as ‘Manmat Desale’, he collected cash and took the victim’s ATM card to pay for personal expenses and shopping. Following a complaint filed on August 22, police registered a case under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Information Technology Act and arrested him. Software manufactured a husband. It also manufactured brides. The scammers know that the attraction lies not merely in a fabricated face but also in the credentials on which the marriage market runs: a stable profession, a respectable family an agency with , an office and a phone line. The CAse of the Vanishing Wooer Officers from the Hyderabad Cyber Crime unit cite a case from November 2025 in which a woman met a scammer on a matrimonial app. She had been hoping to find someone to marry While browsing . profiles on the platform, she came across a man who ticked every desirable box in the contemporary Indian marriage market: he had a stable, well-paying job, lived abroad, earned far more than most people, and posted photographs that suggested a comfortable, settled life. Most importantly he claimed that he , genuinely wanted to settle down and start a family She was hopeful about . building a stable future with him, but before long, demands for money began arriving one after another. First, he asked her to transfer funds to help him “sort out a problem”. Soon afterwards, someone claiming to be a Delhi Airport staff member called to say that the man's belongings had been seized by customs and that he needed to pay outstanding taxes. The callers repeatedly assured her that every penny she transferred would eventually be refunded in full. Only Representational Illustrations The scammers know that the attraction lies not merely in a fabricated face but also in the credentials on which the marriage market runs: a stable profession, a respectable family when the man she had sincerely regarded as her fiancé cut off all contact and disappeared without a trace did she realise that she had been scammed. By then, she had lost more than `1.1 crore. From the outset, the man had claimed to be a citizen of another country After just a few conversa. tions, he suggested moving their chats from the matrimonial app to WhatsApp, saying it would be more convenient to communicate privately To allay her suspicions, he . sent her photographs of himself, along with several official-looking documents, gradually building her trust until she became convinced of his identity . Once he had persuaded her to let her guard down, he said he planned to travel to India to meet her. This marked the beginning of the second phase of the scam. A woman claiming to be a Delhi Airport staff member called the victim and told her that the man had been detained at the airport for attempting to enter the country with undeclared foreign currency More calls followed, with . scammers impersonating public officials demanding payments for various charges, including GST, outstanding personal income tax, IMF certification and visa renewal fees. Each time, the victim was assured that every rupee she transferred would be refunded in full. In the end, however, she never recovered a single rupee. The Great Matrimonial Fraud Network Dismissing matrimonial fraud as just another dating-site scam obscures a larger problem unfolding across India’s online dating and matrimonial ecosystem. Advocate Mayank Arora, partner at The Chambers of Bharat Chugh, argues that such fraud should not be treated as isolated cheating cases when there are signs of organised networks. “This seems to have become the vocation of a set of criminals who have organised themselves to make this their vocation,” he says. The BNS, which came into force in July 2024, includes a dedicated organised-crime provision under Section 111, covering economic offences and cybercrime, subject to specific statutory requirements. Not every matrimonial fraud case, however, automatically qualifies. Meanwhile, data from the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal show that 1,128 complaints were filed under the category “online matrimonial scam” in 2025, up from 854 in 2024. These figures capture only formally reported cases classified under this category leaving a much , larger grey area of fake profiles, impersonation, identity theft, financial fraud and extortion. “Matrimonial fraud can be accurately described more as a form of relational social engineering than simple deception using a fake profile,” explains criminologist Arun Kumar. Once a victim believes a relationship is genuine, he says, a financial request “is no longer evaluated as an isolated transaction. It is interpreted through the lens of affection, commitment and future marriage.” Many such crimes may never enter official matrimonialscam statistics because they are classified under other criminal categories, despite marriage being the bait. A former Delhi DCP warns that matrimonial fraud must be viewed as a potential organised-crime threat rather than merely a one-on-one betrayal. “In many cases, there may be a wider network working together, and our investigation must focus on identifying and dismantling that network,” he says. Private detective Naman Jain, founder of Sleuths India, says these scams exploit familiar vulnerabilities, but through emotional manipulation. “Matrimonial fraud is not fundamentally different from other scams that prey on vulnerability . These fraudsters play on the emotions.” His agency has handled cases involving divorced people, those considered past the conventional age of marriage, and individuals insecure about their appearance, finances or relationship prospects. “They start telling people they are very good, appreciating their qualities, and negating the advice of the people around them,” Jain says. The goal is to foster emotional dependence before striking. Once that trust is established, “is the time when they start either blackmailing them or extracting money under some cover story .” A Rainbow of Cheating This discrepancy is at the heart of the issue. India publishes specific statistics on online matrimonial scams, but it has no comprehensive figures for matrimonial fraud across all categories. The reason is simple: such scams are no longer confined to a single type of crime, nor do they necessarily originate online. They have evolved into an integrated ecosystem with multiple entry points: a matrimonial advertisement in a newspaper, a local agent in the Turn to page 2