Father defends Chatra girl accused of duping 2 men

Chatra: Mahendra Prasad Singh, the father of 28-year-old Priyanka Kumari who allegedly duped two husbands through sham marriages and is living with her third in California, US, defended her daughter and claimed that she has been framed.

Talking to TOI on Monday for the first time after the news broke out, Singh, an electrician by profession, said, “My daughter is innocent.

It’s a big conspiracy hatched against her for reasons yet to be known.”

Priyanka’s younger brother Raja Kumar said, “My sister gave birth to a baby boy only 12 days ago. We are worried about her mental status. We don’t know why such false stories are doing the rounds. We are with her and will fight to prove that she has not done anything wrong.”

According to the police case against Priyanka, she got married to Nilay Kumar of Giridih on April 27, 2015, but left him after allegedly duping him of Rs 1 crore two years later. She then married Amit Gupta of Rajkot in Gujarat late in 2017 and later moved to Delhi taking Rs 40 lakh from him citing exigency in her parents’ family. In December 2018, she again married Sumit Dasrath Pawar of Pune and both are now settled in California. She reportedly got in touch with all three men through matrimonial sites.

The case was filed by Priyanka’s current mother-in-law with Pune Police. The woman filed the case after she came to know about Priyanka's “deceit” from her “second husband” Amit. The Rajkot boy was reportedly trying to contact her over the phone, which she left in Pune before leaving for California. It was picked up by her mother-in-law and during the conversations, Amit narrated how he was allegedly “duped” by Priyanka. The news broke out in Jharkhand after Pune Police contacted its Chatra counterparts for assistance in the case.

However, both Singh and Kumar denied that Priyanka married the two men. Singh, a resident of Itkhori block, said his daughter’s marriage was indeed finalised with the Giridih boy and engagement had taken place in 2015, but claimed that they were never married. On her reported marriage to Amit, Singh said, “She did not marry him. Priyanka was in contact with him for a few months before getting married to Sumit.”

He added, “She neither married Nilay nor Amit. She fell in love with Sumit and the marriage took place with the consent of both the families. Whatever allegations levelled against her are baseless. We haven’t received any notice from police either from Pune, Rajkot or Chatra.”

Kumar, too, said her sister was engaged to Nilay but insisted that marriage didn’t take place. “We came to know that Nilay was not a good boy, so we decided to call off the marriage,” he said

He said her sister is an English graduate from the Vinoba Bhave University in Hazaribag and shifted to Delhi after her marriage was cancelled. “There she started working with a private IT company and came in contact with Amit. Later, she came to know that Amit was having some serious health-related problems and so they both parted ways. Finally, she came in contact with Sumit and they got married,” Kumar said.

He added that the photographs of his sister’s alleged marriages doing the rounds were not genuine.