The party was on. Music blasted from the loudspeakers. The 'baraat' was jubilant, and the groom was ready to begin a new chapter in his life. But the joy faded as the wedding party neared their destination. There were no decorative lights, no music, and no guests. A lock hung outside the door that was meant to be their destination, but even that address turned out to be fake, leaving the wedding party clueless about what they should do next. The incident was reported in Punjab's Moga.
The groom was from Amritsar, and their marriage was fixed by her sister-in-law. The bride was her cousin. After months of long phone conversations and video calls, the two families fixed the date and place of their wedding.
The girl's family provided the groom with an address in Moga where the baraat reached at 11 pm. But there was no sign of any wedding. The bride's and her family's phones were switched off as well.
It was devastating for the groom, whose family and friends had travelled about 100 km for the much-awaited wedding. They wandered from street to street in an unknown town and tried to inquire with the locals with the girl's photo, but that didn't help. No one knew the family.
Convinced that they had been cheated, they headed to the police station and filed a complaint.
A similar case was reported last December when a man brought his baraat to India from Dubai only to find that the bride's side had disappeared. This followed some demand for money by the bride. The groom had sent it. The sudden disappearance that followed appeared as a clear case of fraud.
A police complaint was filed, but no one has been arrested yet.
The focus has now shifted to the use of social media and cybercrime angles to such incidents of fraud, with cops flagging activities of some gangs to emotionally trap people under the pretext of marriage.
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