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A 26-year-old woman has been arrested after allegedly posing as a man to marry two women in order to obtain a dowry.
Daily Mail reports that the suspect, Krishna Sen, is believed to have posed as a man since 2014 when she wed her first wife, using Facebook to snare her brides.
They reportedly separated soon after the wedding, then she married another woman in April 2017.
Her former in-laws told police that she had been harassing their daughter for a dowry and borrowed more than £9,000 from them to start a business, but didn’t repay it.
Sen reportedly spoke in a deep voice, smoked, drank alcohol and rode a motorcycle with her male friends to maintain the ruse.
According to the BBC, Sen told Police that she had never undressed in front of her two wives or been sexually intimate with them.
But The Times of India report that she confessed to using sex toys to make love to her brides in complete darkness.
Sen, formerly known as Sweety, was arrested on Wednesday in the northern state of Uttarakhand for demanding dowry, which is illegal in India.
It is not clear whether her parents were aware of what she had been doing.
A police officer was quoted as saying: “With male hairstyle, dress and behaviour, Krishna used to live a male life. Nobody ever doubted Krishna”.
Paying and accepting dowry is a long-standing tradition in South Asia where the bride’s parents gift cash, clothes and jewellery to the groom’s family.
Daily Mail UK reports that though illegal in India since 1961, the practice is commonplace.
