AHMEDABAD, Jan 28: Wanted: A suitable match for non-resident Indian, 45 years, rich, good-looking, having bungalows at Mississippi (USA), Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi and Mathura. Response invited from young, smart, good-looking girls who want to settle in the US. Write to Post Box 4257, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad.Beware of responding to such matrimonial advertisements. Instead of a palatial mansion in USA, you may well land up behind bars. In the second week of January, the Narcotics Control Bureau, Ahmedabad, arrested Premnath Harinath Kashyap for smuggling drugs with the help of `wives' won through just such irresistible advertisements. Kashyap was found to have married 35 times - around five times with foreigners - to further his racket.The NCB, led by zonal director P S Tomar, raided the 67-year-old's Kashyap's flat in Maharaja Apartments near the Vijay Char Rasta to find one kg of mandrax powder. It also arrested one Anoop Sharma, a distant relative of the accused, who was present in the apartment.Even as the NCB party was raiding his flat, Kashyap was languishing in Nagpur jail on charges of cheating a lady doctor of the city. NCB intelligence officer Jitendra Raghuvanshi brought him to the city on January 7 and he was formally arrested the next day. At present he is lodged in Sabarmati Jail.With the arrest, the NCB personnel unravelled a nefarious web that could give James Bond a run for his money. According to sources, Kashyap had made a habit of advertising in the matrimonial columns with a post box address. After screening the replies, he would pick the most suitable girls - that is the ones who seemed smart, practical and intelligent - as his narcotics-carrier `wives'.Sources say the accused - a patient of acute diabetes and high blood pressure but youthful enough to pass off as 45 years of age - would go through the motions of marrying the selected girl, usually in her early or mid-30s, and live with her for a couple of days in a hotel. Then, he'd buy a two tickets for a honeymoon in the US, but stay back at the last minute on the pretext of urgent business.With the woman went packets of heroin or brown sugar, with or without her knowledge. If caught midway, Kashyap simply disowned her; if she made it to the US or Canada, he would follow suit for the `honeymoon'.Incidentally, Kashyap is also accused of cheating women he did not marry; he was in Nagpur jail for defrauding an Oman-based doctor of her passport and Rs 50,000.This wasn't the first time that Kashyap's adventures landed him in jail: he's served time in Tihar jail from 1976 to 1980 for cheating a woman; in the early '80s, he cooled his heels in a Canadian jail for seven years for smuggling narcotics before being acquitted by the Canadian High Court.In 1985, he was caught with 2 kg of heroin in the US and sentenced to jail for eight years. Deported to India in 1990, he was picked up again in August 1994 by the Mumbai Customs for smuggling 1.5 kg heroin. He was last acquitted by the Special Narcotics Court, Mumbai, in December 1996. A case of cheating a woman is still pending in a Calcutta court.Kashyap's woman victims covered doctors, teachers, lecturers and engineers, say sources, adding that the accused has a wife and a grandson in Mathura and another wife and a daughter in Ahmedabad. He was reportedly in the process of marrying at least two women - one in Ahmedabad and the other in Bangalore - when he was arrested.
