Meeting Mr Swain

Born and raised in Odisha, Rashi, 48, came to Delhi in 2010. She’d been forced to grow up quickly when she lost her father at a young age. It fell upon Rashi to take care of her family. By the time she moved to Delhi, she’d been a school teacher for over a decade. In Delhi, she lived with her family – her mother, brother, sister-in-law, nieces and nephews – in Dwarka. When Rashi talks about her brother and sister in-law, it’s evident that they’re her pillars of support.

“More than the sadness of my marriage failing, I am upset that my brother lost his earnings because of me. I got married with his savings,” Rashi said.

In 2018, Rashi signed up for an account on shaadi.com. “All of my youth was spent just working,” Rashi told Newslaundry. “So I thought, now it's time to relax, take care of someone, cook for them, wait for them...live a housewife’s life.”

She met a 50-year-old doctor from Odisha, named Ramesh Swain, through the matrimonial website. He told her he was still single because his stepmother had never seemed interested in getting him married. He said he’d focused all his energy on his job and now hoped to find a “simple girl” who would take care of his home.

Everything he said – the years spent focused on work; shouldering responsibilities from a young age; looking for companionship – resonated with Rashi who had a basic checklist for a prospective husband. First, he should not have been married before. Second, he shouldn’t be from Delhi because the city slickers were cheats, in Rashi’s experience. Third, he should be a gentleman.

The unassuming and unpretentious Swain seemed to tick all the boxes. At the time, Rashi was struck by what a good listener he was.

“I didn’t know I was falling into a gutter,” Rashi told Newslaundry.

The marriage scam

In July 2018, two months after they met online, Rashi and Swain were married at an Arya Samaj temple in Delhi’s Janakpur. From Swain’s side, there was only one attending guest – a man whom Swain introduced as a police officer who was apparently appointed by the government to ensure Swain’s safety. Exactly who that man was and why he was with Swain that day is one of the many questions surrounding this case.

Rashi is one of five women who have accused Swain of marital fraud. He’s also been charged with 10 cases in which victims say he promised them admissions in medical colleges and jobs as doctors in exchange for money. The police believe the number of women he conned into marriage may be as high as 27.

The investigation into Swain has uncovered that between 2018 and 2022, he married at least 18 women and defrauded them of Rs 5.5 crore. Through his fraudulent schemes, Swain acquired at least 13 credit cards and three properties in Bhubaneshwar.

So far, Swain’s second wife, whom he married in 2001, and another person have been arrested as accomplices. His two children from this marriage are also suspected of being involved in Swain’s schemes.

In addition to his real name, Swain had at least three aliases: Dr Bijayshree Ramesh Kumar, Bidhu Prakash Swain, and Ramani Ranjan Swain. Despite having studied only till Class 10, Swain was able to convince his wives and their families that he was accomplished and qualified. Some thought he was a doctor. Some knew him to be a bureaucrat.

In reality, Swain’s professional record included being arrested in 2006 for carrying out financial fraud and again in 2011, when he was accused of running a scam worth Rs 2 crore. It was after these brushes with the law that Swain turned to the marriage market to find new victims.

All the women Swain targeted were in their 40s or 50s and most were accomplished in their own right. The list of victims includes two advocates, a doctor, a government employee, a chartered accountant as well as a commandant with the Indo-Tibetan border police. Their one shared vulnerability appears to be that by conventional standards, these women are considered too old for marriage.

Marked by stigma

Today, scarred by her experience with Swain, Rashi is cautious and careful. Before meeting this reporter for the first time, she confirmed with the police that they had indeed shared Rashi’s contact with Newslaundry and at our meeting, she was accompanied by her sister in-law.

It had been a month since Swain’s arrest when we met in a mall in Delhi. While there was some relief from knowing Swain had been exposed, Rashi worried about the consequences that may be in store for her. Another woman who, like Rashi, had married Swain and filed a complaint against him started receiving threatening calls, allegedly from one of Swain’s sons, soon after she approached the police.

Swain has four children – two from his first marriage, two from his second marriage – of whom two live in Delhi. Rashi worries they may hold a grudge against her because her police complaint led to Swain’s downfall.

When Swain was being taken to court after his arrest, he told the media that was present, “I have not married all these women and I am indeed a doctor.” It seems he was confident he’d be able to convince the women who had complained against him to reverse their stand. Or perhaps he guessed his other “wives” wouldn’t want to be known as victims of a con.

While some of the women who were targeted by Swain are cooperating with the prosecution, many are unwilling to speak about their experiences publicly and on record. When Newslaundry contacted one of the women who had given her statement to the police, she didn’t want to speak about the case to the media. She said she had recently remarried and didn’t want this past relationship to cast a shadow on her new marriage.

“Betrayal is one thing, but the matter has become so highlighted [in the press]. There is a lot of social stigma that they will have to live with,” said Sukhwinder Kaur, a counsellor who was approached by the Bhubaneswar police to work with them to convince Swain’s victims to cooperate with the investigation.

Kaur said the list of victims includes women with children, widows and those who don’t have much by way of a support system. Many are unwilling to navigate the social censure that follows being known as Swain’s victims.

All the media reports highlight what is true of most scams – Swain successfully fooled targets who were more qualified and capable than him. However, when the targets are mature, working women, their so-called gullibility seems to add credence to gendered stereotypes about older women being irrational and desperate.

Most of the reports also emphasise Swain’s mediocre appearance and short stature, as though the con would be more credible if he had been tall and handsome. Swain’s “wives” were not looking for superficial attributes like good looks. Rather, they were looking for markers of stability. His average face and portly carriage made him seem more reliable because the cliché is that the con artist will adopt airs and seem slick. Swain was the opposite. He was a patient listener. He sent videos of him singing songs. There seemed to be an air of simplicity about him that his targets read as authenticity.

What he was actually doing was playing on the vulnerability that many women feel in societies that look down on single mature women and view their unmarried status as a failure and character flaw.

The public reaction to the media coverage has shown little sympathy for Swain’s victims. As articles on Swain started coming out after his arrest, Rashi would read the comments on social media, where users accused her of marrying Swain out of greed or of being an ‘aunty’ who lusted after sex and money.

Night after night, Rashi has gone through the articles and the comments, all the while wondering how she could have fallen for Swain’s con.

“If you see him, you won’t ever think he can do anything like this,” Rashi told Newslaundry.

‘It’s like a miracle’

“He [Swain] would target women who were between the ages of 45 and 50, women who were well-educated and well-established. He’d scam the women of Rs 10-20 lakh. In some cases, he’d take gold from them,” said Kaur. “It is surprising as this was being done on a large-scale by one man who was in his late 60s.”

Cases of polygamy aren’t unusual in India, but Swain’s case stands out even for the police. “A case like this, where he has married between 18 to 27 women – it’s like a miracle,” said Sanjeev Satpathy, assistant commissioner of police, who is leading the case.

Tracing Swain’s phone records, the police have spoken to 106 people who they suspect to be victims in marriage and financial fraud. Yet only three of the women Swain defrauded tried to lodge complaints against Swain. None of them knew the scale of his operation or that there was anyone else who had complained about Swain to the police.

Through shaadi.com, Swain had access to women from all over the country. His victims are scattered across India and this proved to be a challenge for the police.

“Initially, we could not trace Swain,” said Satpathy. “He would keep moving cities across India – Guwahati one day, Bengaluru the next, Indore after that. During Covid, it was all the more difficult. But we knew he would come to Odisha, especially Bhubaneswar as he had property here,” said Satpathy.

The investigators have also learnt that Swain threatened at least some of his wives “in different ways” if they “tried to raise their voices against him”. However, Swain’s tactics go beyond obvious coercion. He persuaded the women he targeted to believe in him. Two women – one from Telangana and another from Andhra Pradesh – continue to insist Swain is a “gentleman” to the police, even after being informed of Swain’s scams.

The first time Swain asked Rashi for money after they got married was when he told her he was setting up a medical college. He told her his own bank account had been frozen and that he needed her to give him Rs 1 lakh.

Altogether, Swain took almost Rs 10 lakh from Rashi, who reached out to her family and asked them to help Swain financially. Her sister in-law, for instance, loaned Rashi Rs 1 lakh, which Rashi gave to Swain. Ultimately, Rashi’s brother would end up paying the rent of Rs 30,000 for the flat in Dwarka that was supposed to be Rashi’s marital home with Swain. The cheques that Swain gave the landlord invariably bounced.

The financial losses have been severe for Rashi and her family, who dipped into their hard-earned savings to support Swain. Yet, what ultimately broke the relationship was not the money that Swain stole, but the loneliness of Rashi’s married life.

Catching a con artist

Before they’d got married, Swain had told Rashi he wanted her to always be by his side. He said he wanted Rashi to accompany him on all his work trips. Rashi imagined a married life in which she divided her time between Bhubaneswar, where Swain had a home, and their rented place in Dwarka.

Instead, much of Rashi’s marriage was a study in solitude. Swain would come to the Dwarka flat only for a few days every two to three months.

Rashi admits that she ignored some warning signs in those early days. “Once you marry at a later stage like I did,” Rashi said, “you think, why spoil a relationship at this age?”

It became obvious that her husband was keeping secrets from her when Rashi visited Bhubaneswar. On multiple occasions, Swain would disappear after spending a day or two with her. “Once, he said that the president is visiting and he has to go on special duty,” Rashi recalled. “He would say things like this that you can’t even verify.”

The first person to alert Rashi to Swain’s deceit was the domestic help in Bhubaneswar, who told Rashi that Swain already has two wives and that he was planning to get married again. The same help had warned another one of Swain’s targets, who also filed a police complaint against him.

When Rashi confronted Swain, he denied the allegations and told her that he wanted her to be the Mumtaz to his Shahjahan.

The declarations of love and commitment only served to paper over the cracks in their marriage. “Once a suspicion enters your head, it doesn't leave,” Rashi said. Her doubts increased when one day, she saw a notification from shaadi.com pop up on Swain’s phone. Swain had told Rashi on their wedding day that he’d deleted his account on the website.

Rashi decided to set a test for Swain: “I made a fake profile on the matrimonial site and sent him a request for marriage – which he accepted.”

At the time, Swain denied he was being unfaithful and said someone on his staff had mistakenly accepted that request. Rashi didn’t believe him, but found it difficult to counter his explanation.

The last straw for Rashi was the response she got to a photo she uploaded on Facebook. It was a selfie she’d taken with Swain. She said she’d put it up in the hope of finding irrefutable evidence of Swain’s infidelity. “Since I had doubts, I thought if I’m right, other women may also be searching,” said Rashi.

Soon enough, two women got in touch with her and said the man in the photo was their husband. They’d married Swain after Rashi and Swain’s wedding. Five more women responded after some time.

Though at the time she had no idea how many women Swain had conned, the Facebook post gave Rashi undeniable proof that Swain was unfaithful and lying to her. His frequent absences were obviously not work-related as he claimed.

Rashi and the other women formed a WhatsApp group. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to work together against Swain. “Everyone was suspicious of the other, doubting each other,” Rashi recalled.

Meanwhile, Rashi felt trapped in a marriage that was nothing like the companionship she had dreamt of on her wedding day. “Once when we fought, he threatened me, telling me to let him do what he wants and [warning me] that he could harm me too,” she said.

Rashi told Newslaundry that at one point – she’s forgotten exactly when – she went online and submitted an online complaint to the Odisha police and wrote a letter to Swati Maliwal, the chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women. She got no response from either authority. “I got very frustrated. I had nothing left to lose. Whatever I had, this man had destroyed,” she said.

By the time Rashi made the trip to Bhubaneswar and lodged a complaint against Swain with the Bhubaneswar police, she’d tried everything to get out of the marriage. Confronting Swain with his lies hadn’t helped and neither had finding evidence of his infidelity. She’d tried to get their marriage nullified, but that effort had failed too. Swain told her he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her and that he wouldn’t let her go.

“Two years of my life went by just crying,” said Rashi. “Sometimes I used to think about suicide, just so I can end this story.”

Waiting for closure

Swain’s last-known marriage was held in December 2021. It seems even the pandemic didn’t slow him down. “When the world was fighting for cylinders and hospital beds during Covid, this man was getting married,” said Rashi. Her disgust is unmistakable.

Between January and March of this year, he was planning to get married to three other women and was arrested about a week before one of the weddings.

In hindsight, the red flags seem numerous and obvious to Rashi. Her brother had pointed out that Swain looked older than the 50 years he claimed to be. Their landlord had expressed doubts about Swain being a doctor. Then there were the bounced cheques and the incessant travel. However, no one had suspected Swain of being the con artist that he proved to be.

At one time, Rashi faced taunts for being single. Once she got married, there were whispers about her because she and her husband were apart most of the time. Now, she’s seen as the woman who was so “desperate” to get married that she fell for a sensational scam.

While the police conduct their investigation into Swain’s frauds and the process of bringing him to justice begins in court, for Rashi, the process of finding closure is an exercise in patience.

*Rashi’s name has been changed upon request to maintain her privacy.