19-year-old posing as IAS trainee gets engaged, lands in jail

CHENNAI: Supriya*, 22, could not have been happier when she got a response to her profile on a matrimony website from Surya. Her parents, too, were thrilled about the prospects of getting an IAS officer as their son-in-law though he was only 19. After quick exchanges , the boy and the girl got engaged in Pune, where Supriya works as a clerk.
As the marriage date neared, Supriya was all ears for Surya's IAS tales, but she realised the young man was not comfortable talking much beyond that he was undergoing civil service training in Tamil Nadu.When Supriya insisted, Surya stopped taking her calls. Turning suspicious, the woman made some inquiries in TN, but could not get any details of any such person in the IAS cadre. Based on a complaint from her, the Pune police on Friday arrested Surya from his house in Uthamapalayam near Theni.It turned out that he had not studied beyond Class 12.
On questioning, Surya told police he cooked up the IAS story to cheat the woman. He has been remanded in a Pune prison after being charged under various sections of IPC and Information Technology Act. Police said he confessed that he found the woman's details on a matrimony website in April 2015. He befriended her and the two were soon interacting on social media .
Surya told her parents that he came from a rich family .The parents, without verifying his credentials, got their daughter engaged to Surya.They gifted him a gold ring and also gave him a flight ticket from Pune to Hyderabad last year.
As Surya suddenly disappeared and switched off his mobile, the woman approached the Pune police. “We traced his address and reached his house on Friday ,“ said senior inspector Kamlakar Takawale in-charge of Khadki police station in Pune.
Initial inquiries revealed that Surya's father is an assistant sub-inspector of police in Central Reserve Police Force, Coimbatore.
(*name changed) (*name changed)