A man was arrested from east Delhi’s Shahdara for allegedly impersonating and faking his identity on Facebook as an Air Force pilot to extract money from multiple women after promising to marry each of them, an official said on Thursday.
The accused has been identified as 25-year-old Nitin Gaur, who works in a sari shop in Chandni Chowk. He had created a Facebook account in the name of Sparsha Sharma in 2017, where he would upload pictures of Air Force pilots to convince people that he was a pilot.
The accused has been booked under sections that deal with cheating, forgery, and criminal intimidation.
The first case against the accused was lodged by a resident of Shahdara in October 2022, when the complainant informed the police that her partner had been blackmailing her to pay money in exchange of not uploading her contact number on pornographic sites.
“The first complainant informed us that she had met Sparsh Sharma (Facebook name), aka Nitin Gaur, over Facebook. The accused told her that his bank account was frozen by the Income Tax Department due to technical issues, hence, was facing a financial crisis,” said a senior officer.
Over the next a year and half, he extracted close to ₹11 lakh, the police said. “The complainant had never met the accused in person and when she started doubting his marriage proposal and did not want to pay any further, the accused started blackmailing the complainant,” added the senior police officer.
Through technical surveillance, the police learnt that the account to which the accused was asking the first complainant to transfer funds belonged to another victim.
The second complainant had been cheated of ₹1.5 lakh. The accused had cheated a third woman of ₹1 lakh.
