Lucknow, Oct 7 (IANS): A 40-year-old man in Uttar Pradesh's Lucknow, who exploited women and allegedly duped them of money by posing as a judge, has been arrested, police said.

The Lucknow police cyber cell laid a trap by giving a matrimonial advertisement seeking proposal preferably from a 'judge' to trap the accused identified as Vishnu Shanker Gupta.

Gupta is a law graduate and had practiced in a court for a short period.

Investigation Officer, Firoz Badar, told reporters that, "He targeted divorcees or widows. His biggest target was a woman whom he conned of Rs 43.5 lakh cash, ornaments worth Rs five lakh and two Apple phones worth Rs 3.3 lakh and also sexually exploited her."

The police official said that Gupta would lure the gullible victims by claiming to possess a lot of cash and property.

"Once the victim agreed to marry, he would demand money, saying he is falling short of Rs 20-25 lakh for registry of a piece of land," he added.

A case in this connection was registered at the Hazratganj police station recently.

Vishnu has confessed to having duped 15-20 women so far.

"His targets were affluent women, besides widows or divorcees. He used to contact them through advertisements published in newspapers. In his profile details, he had mentioned his occupation as a judge," Badar said.

In his confession, the accused Vishnu said he was passing through a hard time while practicing law. It was then that he decided to dupe the widows/divorcees from well-off families.

"Being a law practitioner, he was aware of judges and their postings and hence mentioned himself as a judge of some remote district of Uttar Pradesh," the police official added.