PhD scholar posing as ‘Film director’ scams women seeking roles

NEW DELHI: After his music video production venture collapsed, 33-year-old Rahul Dev, who holds a master's degree in political science and is doing his doctoral studies, turned to crime.Posing as a film director, he began targeting women on social media, luring them with false promises of roles in music videos. When they expressed interest, he demanded payments under various pretexts and then disappeared. Over time, he defrauded 17 women before his trail of deception ended with his arrest.Police said a woman from Vishwas Nagar in Shahdara was approached through social media by individuals who offered her a role in an upcoming music video. They later informed her that she had been shortlisted and required her to travel to Mumbai for an audition. She was asked to pay Rs 20,462 for a flight booking, with a promise of reimbursement. Flight tickets, which later proved fake, were shown to her. The complainant transferred the amount to the stipulated bank account.After receiving the payment, the callers severed all contact and she found her number blocked. A case was subsequently registered.Prashant Gautam, DCP (Shahdara), formed a team under SHO (cyber cell) Vijay Kumar to investigate the case. During the probe, the cops traced the bank account where the money was transferred and found it belonged to a woman. On questioning, the woman said she had opened the account on the insistence of one Rahul Dev, who was operating it. Dev was later arrested from Chandigarh. The mastermind, who goes with the alias of Siddharth, lives in Sector 16, Old Faridabad.Dev and his associate, Ashish Pandey of Rohini, posed as casting agents and offered fake roles in music videos via fabricated social media profiles. He impersonated a well-known director, while Pandey mimicked a female voice to gain the victims' trust and to create the illusion that other women were also being selected. They then collected personal details from the victims and convinced them to pay around Rs 20,460 for fake flight bookings to attend auditions in Mumbai.With a master's degree in political science and currently in a PhD programme in history from Delhi University, Dev comes from a modest background. His father is a tailor and his mother a homemaker. In Jan, after shutting down his Chandigarh-based music video production company due to financial losses, he teamed up with Pandey and began defrauding the women.