We trusted people from our community, and now our dignity is shattered, so are our families,” said Abhishek Bairagi, a factory worker, who had travelled more than 100 kilometres from Sehore to get married at the mass wedding.

While there are no national statistics on mass weddings, thousands of such marriages take place every year under government schemes and through community organisations.

From 2017 to 2025, Uttar Pradesh government alone facilitated the weddings of 4.8 lakh people. And the Madhya Pradesh government has wedded thousands of couples since 2006.

But in recent years, mass weddings have emerged as an unlikely arena for fraud. The promise of cash assistance, gifts and other benefits have created incentives for exploitation, even when the monetary gains are modest. What occurred in Dewas was a result of this vulnerability.

“Mass weddings in India have financial and social aspects. The Dewas case was not just a financial scam. It exposed a mindset where the focus is no longer on finding the right partner but simply on acquiring the tag of marriage. People are willing to pay intermediaries to get them married because they believe marriage is essential to being considered settled in life,” said Urvi Mohan, advocate Delhi High Court, specialising in marriage disputes.

Dewas and the wedding fraud 

In India, weddings take an emotional and financial toll.

India is one of the biggest marriage markets. The Confederation of All India Traders estimated that from 1 November to 14 December 2025, Rs 6.50 lakh crore will be spent on weddings.

Starting from wedding planners to a mehendi artist, hundreds of people are involved in two people getting married. With the breadth and depth of the market constantly growing, the chances of fraud have also increased.

What unfolded in Dewas was a glimpse into the growing desperation among families struggling to find brides for their sons. It’s fuelled by a shortage of women in the community.

Keshav, a class 12 graduate, who works as a security guard at a posh society in Indore, was one of the grooms who left empty handed from Dewas.

At Keshav’s village, Kala Pipal, the chaos has subsided but an air of unease persists. Ten days after the incident on 25 May, his family has come to terms with the loss of money and the lack of a bride. Keshav went back to work in Indore immediately after the incident.

“Our dignity was thrashed in our village,” said Bhagwan Das Bairagi, Keshav’s father.

Even the women of the family, who heard the story of fraud from the men who travelled with Keshav, are no longer waiting for “support” from Dewas.

“When someone shows you a photograph and says they can arrange a marriage, you want to believe them,” said Bairagi. “Many families are struggling to find brides for their sons. People take chances because they fear the opportunity may never come again.”

The four accused, all part of the Bairagi clan, allegedly told the victims that the prospective brides were from Matra Chhaya Ashram, an orphanage in Indore run by Seva Bharati, an organisation affiliated with the RSS.

Keshav’s uncle Om Prakash Bairagi found the claim fishy and took it upon himself to investigate.

“One of the victim’s family members came to us because he was about to pay Rs 25,000 [to the scammers] and wanted to verify whether such marriages were actually being conducted through our institution. We told him very clearly that no such programme existed here,” said social worker Sarita Kunhare, who works at the orphanage.

Om Prakash warned the family, but they still proceeded. The 24-year-old’s ailing grandmother wanted to see her grandson wedded to a woman from the community.

Mass weddings scams thrive offline, but most fraud around matrimony is steadily going online—scamsters are lurking on matrimonial websites, dating apps and social media. A December 2025 research paper by V Chithra, professor, Dr Ambedkar Government Law College, Chennai, stated that scammers exploited the trust associated with arranged marriages and matrimonial platforms. The fraudulent use fake identities and emotional manipulation of the target. It pointed out a 9000 per cent surge over four years of such reports. The financial impact in 2024 was as large as Rs 22,000 crore.

“The genesis of all this lies in the enormous emphasis Indian society places on marriage. We are raised with the belief that life is incomplete until you are married. ‘Settling down’ rarely means getting a good job or buying a house—it almost always means getting married and having children. That social pressure creates a market that fraudsters can exploit,” said Mohan.

A Bairagi bride

Wedding-related fraud has become increasingly organised, with scammers following a playbook. What happened in Dewas was not an isolated incident. Mass weddings with “missing brides” have surfaced repeatedly across different parts of the country.

Mass weddings mostly take place in rural or semi-urban areas, where there are fewer outlets to verify information about prospective partners. In many cases, the age gap between the bride and groom is significant, and the men participating are often those who struggle to find partners through conventional marriage networks. There is an agent involved—this is the money-making middleman. Victim families in Dewas reportedly paid between Rs 15,000 and Rs 25,000 each to a middleman. It demonstrates how desperation can be converted into a profitable business model.

Keshav’s family met Sunita Das Bairagi at the wedding function of a relative in April. She was a talkative woman who moved easily among the guests showing off a photo of a beautiful girl on her phone. It’s no unusual sight in India. Weddings are hunting grounds for suitable brides and grooms.

Although Keshav was in Indore, his father and uncles were  impressed by the looks of the girl in the photo and decided to move ahead with the proposal.

“We were told the wedding is next month, and the family has to give Rs 15,000 for the preparation, and it will be a community wedding of Bairagis,” said Om Prakash, who works as a cab driver in Indore.

Bairagis in Madhya Pradesh are traditionally Hindu priests, temple caretakers and spiritual leaders. They belong to the Vaishnavite tradition.

Reluctance to complain

Investment scams, gift and customs clearance frauds, fake NRI groom/ bride schemes, sextortion and loot-and-scoot brides (looteri dulhans) are infamous in Madhya Pradesh.

The “loot-and-scoot bride” is a woman who uses marriage as a way of embedding herself in a family and then disappearing with their money and valuables after gaining their trust. Most of these brides are bought from other states.

“The accused were inspired from Looteri Dulhan,” said Dewas Superintendent of Police (CSP) Sumit Agrawal. All the accused—Mukesh, his wife, Sunita, his father, Narsingh and his brother Dinesh—have been arrested.

All the men worked as menial labourers and were looking for a better life. Wedding fraud was an easy idea.

But of the 42 scammed, the police have only received and registered 13 complaints, including Keshav’s. “In our society these words travel fast, and it was about our dignity, hence a lot of them did not file a complaint,” said Om Prakash.

“Nearly Rs 1.25 lakh has been taken from the victims,” said Agrawal.

This pattern, of reluctance to complaint, was witnessed at a similar mass wedding scam in Ahmedabad.

In 2024, a pamphlet promoting a mass marriage ceremony was circulated under the aegis of the Hindu Jan Vikas Seva Sangh Trust. Families interested in participating were asked to pay Rs 22,000 toward wedding expenses. One hundred and thirteen couples signed up.

However, when they turned up at the venue, there were no wedding preparations. The organisers had absconded. 

News reports claimed around Rs 24 lakh was taken from the families. A social worker convinced one of the 113 couples to file a complaint, which led to the opening of a case.

Unlike the Ahmedabad event, the Dewas wedding was brought to the attention of the grooms through community networks.

“We trusted it because the information came through relatives,” said Om Prakash. “One person trusted another, and then others followed. When relatives say a marriage has been arranged, you don’t immediately think it could be a fraud.”

The family had pinned all their hopes on the wedding. “Like any parent, we were waiting for a daughter-in-law to come home,” said Keshav’s mother, who did not want to be named.

“When your son reaches marriageable age, that is what every family dreams of.”

Government schemes, NGO initiatives 

Different states across India have witnessed variations of the mass wedding fraud.

In Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia, arrests were made after a mass wedding ceremony when authorities discovered that several grooms had allegedly been paid by marriage brokers to pose as husbands in order to fraudulently claim government benefits.

Mass weddings in India are carried out through government schemes, community temples and NGOs.

Madhya Pradesh has Mukhyamantri Kanya Vivah/Nikah Yojana, Uttar Pradesh has Mukhyamantri Samuhik Vivah Yojana, Rajasthan has Mukhyamantri Kanyadan Yojana, Chhattisgarh has Mukhyamantri Kanyadan Yojana, Bihar has Mukhyamantri Kanya Vivah Yojana.

Under all the government schemes, money is given to the bride and her family to take care of wedding expenses. In Uttar Pradesh, around Rs one lakh is given to the bride’s family—Rs 60,000 into the account of the bride, Rs 25,000 for the purchase of wedding goods, and Rs 15,000 for arrangements.

“The fact that these scams keep occurring tells us there is demand for them [mass weddings]. Fraudsters are not creating a market out of thin air—they are exploiting an existing social pressure. If there were no demand, these marriage fixers and agents would not be able to operate so successfully,” said Mohan.

Cultural homogeneity

Keshav was not the only one from his village who got decked up and traveled to Dewas for the community wedding. Sunita Das’s scheme had spread like wildfire in the nearby villages, especially among the Bairagi community.

Among those who turned up at the wedding venue was Bhim Singh, a 40-year-old farmer who lives alone with his 100-year-old father. Although he denied to ThePrint that he had attended as a groom, his neighbours said he had been looking for a bride.

All of them left their homes smiling, anticipating a wife, who would take care of their families.

Mass weddings are often the last resort for men who have trouble finding wives. They may be past society’s prescribed marriageable age, like Singh, divorced or even drug addicts.

It’s this desperation that agents or marriage bureau take advantage of.

“The agents, who are known as bicholia (middle men), promise these families that they will get them married, and ask them for money,” said Devendra Kumar, founder of Ladli Foundation, a Delhi-based organisation working toward the upliftment of vulnerable women in rural and urban areas.