The Vashi police have booked a self-proclaimed godman and six others for raping, blackmailing and cheating a 56-year-old woman of over R78 lakh on the pretext of ‘shower of money’, finding hidden treasure and saving her husband from an evil spell. The entire fraud was revealed when the woman suffered a stroke and her daughter and husband found her notebook at home.

According to the complaint filed by the woman’s husband, a 62-year-old retired government officer, for the past eight months, he had been travelling back and forth to Ratnagiri to supervise repair work of their village home. While he was in Ratnagiri, on September 24, his daughter called to tell him that the woman suffered a stroke and was paralysed. The man rushed to Navi Mumbai to find his wife in the ICU of a private hospital.