After spending several days on the run and constantly changing locations to avoid arrest, the accused Ankur Meena was finally tracked down in an operation led by DCP Anand Bhoite of Zone XI, alongside Senior Police Inspector Anil Thackeray from the Bangur Nagar police station.
In collaboration with Delhi’s Anand Vihar police, the Bangur Nagar police conducted an intensive search of several hotels in the Shahdara area, including high-end properties (Pic: Getty Images)
New Delhi: The Mumbai Police have arrested Ankur Meena, a 26-year-old accused man of orchestrating a dating app scam that tricked men into visiting certain clubs through women using fake profiles. Meena was arrested after an extensive manhunt led by Cyber In-charge Assistant Police Inspector Vivek Tambe and Police Sub-Inspector Rohan Patil, Mid-Day reported.
The operation was supervised by DCP Anand Bhoite of Zone XI and Senior Police Inspector Anil Thackeray of Bangur Nagar police station. Meena had been on the run for several days, frequently changing locations to evade capture. He had left his home and relocated to a hotel in Delhi, where he allegedly continued to run the scam, targeting nightclubs across the city, a Hindustan Times report said.
Scam mastermind caught
In collaboration with Delhi’s Anand Vihar police, the Bangur Nagar police conducted an intensive search of several hotels in the Shahdara area, including high-end properties. Their efforts paid off when they received accurate information about Meena’s whereabouts and arrested him early Thursday at the IP Royal Hotel in Anand Vihar.
Meena comes from a well-established family in Saboli Extension’s Sushila Garden, where his father works as a school principal and his brother is a dentist. His family, reportedly unaware of his illegal activities, had no prior knowledge of his involvement in the scam. The police said that Meena became involved in the scam while working in various nightclubs in Delhi, where he met people running similar schemes and began copying their methods.
Multiple cities, clubs under investigation
While Meena has not been fully cooperative during the investigation, he has provided some information about certain clubs in Mumbai linked to the scam. “We are investigating the clubs in Mumbai, Pune and Thane involved in this scam and trying to identify all those connected to the racket,” a police officer said.
Authorities said that Meena had previously operated the scam in cities including Delhi, Goa, Jaipur, Dehradun, Agra, Lucknow, Bhopal, Jabalpur, Raipur and Nagpur before expanding to Mumbai, Pune and Thane. He had allegedly been running the scam in the Mumbai region for the past year and a half to two years.
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