Mukeem Khan told the cops he used to target Muslim women for marriage.
New Delhi:
He befriended women online and asked them to marry him. And once he had earned the women’s trust, he would disappear with their money. This was the modus operandi of Mukeem Khan, a conman who had cheated over 50 women across the country, including a woman judge who failed to see through his lies.
Khan, 38, a resident of Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh, was arrested by the Delhi Police Crime Branch recently for extorting money from women on false pretexts.
He created multiple accounts on matrimonial websites with fake identities and trapped women in his intricate web of lies.
Khan told the cops he used to target Muslim women – unmarried, widowed and divorced – for marriage. He introduced himself as a government officer and enticed them with fake stories about his wife being dead and he being unable to take care of his daughter.
Khan, who is married and has three children, used to share photos of his wife and daughter with these women. He even met their families and fix the wedding date. Once he had earned their trust, he would ask for money to book marriage halls or for other wedding expenses.
And then, he would disappear.
During his interrogation, he revealed he had conned over 50 women across the country. A woman judge from Uttar Pradesh too was among his victims.
How it started
Khan created his first matrimonial website in 2020 – six years after his first marriage. It is where he found his first target – a Vadodara-based divorced woman with a five-year-old daughter – and proposed to marry her. She agreed.
Before leaving Vadodara, he faked a story about losing his wallet and took Rs 30,000 from her. He returned and started living with her, but the idea of earning easy money had him hooked.
In 2023, he married another woman – a widow – in Delhi with another fake story.
This continued – in different states, in different cities.
He received expensive gifts like mobile phones, jewellery and even two-wheelers from these women, and later sold those. If he couldn’t manage to lure them into buying gifts for him, he would fake a story about his ATM card not working or a shortage of money.
In one such incident, he booked a two-wheeler as a gift for a woman, paying only a token amount. Citing shortage, he asked her to pay the rest, and disappeared during the first ride.
