Woman arrested for conning 5 star hotels

Kolkata: The reel life characters of Bunty and Babli from a Bollywood comedy movie had become immensely popular in 2005 for their capabilities of conning people. In the present day, the Bidhannagar Police has come across a middle-aged woman who also believes in leading a happy-go-lucky life by cheating authorities of five star hotels.

Police arrested the accused woman, Sumana Sankar, from a five-star-hotel at New Town on Sunday.

Preliminary investigation revealed that she, along with her minor son and daughter, used to stay in different three and five star hotels to lead a luxurious life but used to flee without paying a single penny by befooling the hotel authorities.

The police are yet to ascertain the exact reason behind committing such crime, but suspect that she did it to lead a luxurious life.

Initially she gave some money for her stay in the hotel to gain faith of the authorities. She had stayed in some hotels at Salt Lake and New Town

for around 10 to 12 days and used to flee from those hotels with her children when the bills touched around Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh.

According to a police officer, she used to fool the hotel authorities saying that she was not in a position to clear the bills for certain reasons. She told the authorities of most of the hotels that she was in real trouble and had to leave her home immediately as she was short of money. She also used to assure that her husband will be clearing the due bill within a day.

Initially, hotel authorities did not doubt her as she was well dressed and had excellent English communicating skills.

Finally, authorities of a hotel lodged a complaint with Bidhannagar South police station and the police initiated a probe in this connection.

It is learnt that the police received a call from another hotel with the authorities stating that a woman with two children wants to leave their hotel without paying bills citing that she was in some trouble.

Without wasting any time, a team of policemen went to the hotel and arrested the woman. Her children were sent to a children home. Investigation revealed that the woman is

originally a resident of Fazilnagar in Uttar Pradesh and police suspect that she had committed similar crimes in other states as well.