Lucknow, April 14 -- When Manisha Rastogi lost her husband Anand to cancer, she believed she had faced the worst blow life could give her. But she was wrong: What followed was a betrayal far more devastating than the dreaded disease itself - an elaborate scam that changed her personal tragedy into a goldmine for fraudsters.
"A few weeks before he died, some people came and claimed they were representatives of a government scheme," said a teary-eyed Manisha at her modest Kanpur home where Anand's photograph hangs on a living room wall.
"They took his documents, opened a bank account in his name, and withdrew '17 lakh after he passed away. We did not even know such a policy existed."
Manisha's is just one among hundreds of similar stories ...