Looking for love on a dating app, a civil service aspirant right-swiped with no idea of what kind of a soup it will land him in.
The victim, unnamed by the police, went to the Black Mirror Cafe in East Delhi's Vikas Marg on Sunday for celebrating Versha's birthday, the woman he recently matched with on Tinder, NDTV reported.
The duo ordered some food, two cakes and four non-alcoholic shots at the cafe and their date seems to be going quite well. Then suddenly, Versha rushed out of the place, citing a family emergency.
Meanwhile, the victim finished his food and asked for the bill, which left him in a shock. The cafe give him a bill of a whopping amount of Rs 1,21,917.70, for something which should not cost more than a few thousand rupees.
Quick to flag the issue with the bill's amount, the man was then threatened and confined at the cafe, forced to pay the sum.
The amount was transferred via an online payment method to Akshay Pahwa, one of the owners of the cafe. The 32-year-old Pahwa is reportedly a resident of East Delhi's Shahdara and has received education till Class 10.
The victim promptly rushed out of the case and immediately filed a case at a police station. Following which a four-member team led by Inspector Sanjay Gupta was formed to probe the case and Pahwa was soon taken into custody.
Reportedly, Pahwa told the cops during interrogation that the Black Mirror Case is owned by him, his cousin Vansh Pahwa and a friend - Ansh Grover.
Akshay informed the police about several "table managers" being hired by the cafe, including one Aryan -- a class & dropout and unemployed at present -- and Digranshu.
Now Akshay and his team have a tie up with Versha, whose original identity is Afsan Parveen. Her other aliases included Ayesha and Noor. Cops nabbed Parveen from another one of her dates, where she was sitting with a Mumbai-based man she met on Shaadi.com.
The 25-year-old Parveen revealed how they used to trap men. It was Aryan who posed as Versha to the civil service aspirant and called him for a date to celebrate her birthday in Laxmi Nagar on June 23.
Aryan had also sent a one-time view image of Versha aka Parveen to the victim. And once their trap was at the cafe, Parveen came up with the family emergency excuse and left the place, leaving the bill to be paid for by the victim.
Once they get the money from their victims, each of these team members get their own share. Parveen gets a 15 per cent cut of the amount they charge from these men they trap, the table and cafe managers divide among themselves a 45 per cent of the cut and finally the owners get the remaining 40 per cent share, NDTV's report said.
Several such cases of catfishing and honey-trapping people into such scams have been rising out of Delhi-NCR and other major cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, police said.
They reportedly noted that such extensive plans work because of their well-oiled, tried and tested mechanisms, which include a set of people who play different roles. Like in this case, it was the owners, the table managers and then those who swipe left and right on the dating apps.
The fake profiles on these dating apps, police said, were being created by the table managers, who then used it to lure men to their cafes where they overpriced the food and the drinks. The victims are confined to the cafe, threatened and even beaten till the money is paid to them.
Akshay Pahwa and Afsan Parveen were arrested by the police, who also seized their mobile phones and the cafe's register. Further investigation into the matter is underway, while efforts are being made to nab the other accused.
