3 sent to judicial custody for duping bachelors wishing to settle in Canada

Three members of a gang, including a mother-son duo, have been sent to judicial custody till July 31 for their involvement in a fraud targeting bachelors eager to migrate to Canada.

The accused were arrested by the Doraha police on the complaint of one of the victims on July 10 at Hotel Zenith in Doraha, where they had fixed yet another engagement with seventh such victim. The earlier six being from Bathinda, Moga, Shahkot, Raikot, Barnala and Dharamkot.

Harpreet Kaur, who is in Canada, gained the trust of eligible bachelors through her photos and videos.

Harpreet had gone to Canada on a study visa. She along with her mother Sukhdarshan Kaur, brother Manpreet Singh and Ashok Kumar of Chapar village began targeting innocent boys through matrimonial platforms.

Harpreet would pose as a potential bride to create a false sense of intimacy and convince the victims for marriage. Once the trust was established, they would extract lakhs from them by holding a marriage through video call or Harpreet’s framed photograph.

The “engagement scam” was foiled when one of the victims, Rajwinder Singh of Dullewal, stumbled upon a WhatsApp message regarding extraction of money, mistakenly sent by Harpreet’s mother on his cellphone.

He lost no time and informed the police as he came to know about it.