The Mumbai police have registered the first FIR in a dating app scam. The Amboli police filed the FIR against an unknown woman on August 24. The complainant, Pratik Jadhav, 34, connected with her via a dating app and met her in Andheri. Later, they went to Godfather Hotel, where allegedly the woman and the hotel staff conspired to cheat him with an inflated bill of Rs 55,000 for food and drinks.
Jadhav claimed that another person, Arun Kumar, also fell victim to the scam, losing Rs73,000. The case was filed under sections 318(4) (cheating) and 3(5) (general explanations) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
According to the FIR, Jadhav is a resident of Belapur and works as an IT professional. On August 10, through his Tinder app he connected with a woman (profile ID Manisha 25). On the same day, she requested to meet him at the Godfather Hotel at 5.30 pm. She claimed to be from Uttar Pradesh and said that she lived in Delhi before coming to Mumbai 10 days ago to work as a makeup artist.
At the hotel, the woman ordered chicken chilli, a corn starter, two Budweisers, 60 ml of Antiquity Blue whiskey, and two Red Bulls; they also played with two sparkling guns. Jadhav observed that despite consuming a significant amount of alcohol, the woman appeared unaffected, which led him to question whether she was a regular drinker.
Later, a waiter presented them with a bill of Rs55,000. The woman took the bill, said she would inquire with the staff about the charges, and asked Jadhav to pay, which he did using his credit card. Jadhav left the hotel alone and called her to inquire what the hotel said about the bill but she denied meeting him or receiving the bill, asked him not to call again and hung up. Later, her phone was switched off.
He then checked the transaction and discovered the money had been transferred to an account belonging to Spy Technologies in New Delhi. He also noticed that she had deleted all their chats on WhatsApp, and her dating app profile had been removed.
Jadhav later claimed that others too had been defrauded similarly and the hotel’s charges were three times more than normal. “The police applied bailable sections and assured me they would add sections as the investigation progresses,” he said.
Deepika Bharadwaj, men’s rights activist and former journalist, said, “The scam at Godfather is tip of the iceberg. There are multiple clubs in Mumbai where this scam is running and many more are falling prey. The police registered an FIR only after the matter was highlighted by several people. I had requested them to look into the scam earlier also but no action was taken. Even now, despite the scale of the scam, very lenient sections have been added. This is a huge nexus operating across Mumbai.”
