Bhubaneswar, May 4: Police today arrested a 30-year-old IT professional for allegedly duping and threatening a Gurgaon-based woman after promising to marry her.

The accused, Shakti Dutta Samal, who had graduated from a private engineering college, used to work with a multinational IT firm in Bangalore.

The police said Samal, a Laxmi Sagar resident, had befriended the 43-year-old divorcee through a matrimonial website about three months ago. "The woman, who also has a child, had uploaded her profile on the matrimonial site seeking a groom. Samal also had a fake ID on the website claming himself to be the vice-president of a renowned Bangalore-based multinational IT firm," said a police officer.

The police said Samal had assured the woman of marrying her. "Somehow, Samal also obtained some objectionable photographs of the woman and then started asking her for money threatening to make the photographs public on social networking websites," said the officer.

The accused demanded money in phases and received Rs 3.1 lakh from the woman in a couple of months. "The accused had given the account number of one of his friends and had been asking the woman to deposit the money in the account. We have also arrested his friend, Sourav Prakash Nayak, and recovered Rs 1.23 lakh from him," said the officer.

The police said the woman first hesitated to lodge a complaint fearing damage to her reputation. However, she finally decided to seek police help after Samal had threatened to kill her child if she refused to give more money. "A case under sections 354 A (sexual harassment), 419 (punishment for cheating by impersonation), 420 (cheating) and 385 (putting person in fear of injury in order to commit extortion) of the Indian Penal Code was lodged on May 3 at a women's police station in Gurgoan," said officer.

Subsequently, a police team from Gurgaon reached Bhubaneswar last night and sought help of their local counterparts to nab Samal. He was arrested from a city hotel today. "Initially, he denied having made threat calls to the woman. But later, he admitted to committing it. The accused told us that he had left his job a few years ago," said the officer.

Bangladeshi detained

Police today detained a suspected Bangladeshi national after the regional passport office here had found irregularities in his documents when he tried to obtain a police clearance certificate for a Chinese visa. The 33-year-old man, S.K. Fareed, had obtained the Indian passport in 2007. He is being questioned by the police.

An official said Fareed reached the passport office this afternoon to get a police clearance certificate for a visit to China. "The voter's identity card produced by him did not match that procured from the Election Commission of India. Later, we asked him to produce other identity proofs and he showed a driving licence from Karnataka. However, his father's name mentioned in the driving licence did not match with his father's name in the voter identity card. Besides, his signature in the passport also did not match," said regional passport officer Digbijoy Giri.