A 37-year-old man has been booked for allegedly raping a woman under the pretext of marriage and extorting Rs 3.42 lakh from her in Maharashtra’s Thane district, police said on Sunday.

According to PTI reports, the accused, a resident of Mulund in neighbouring Mumbai, met the 36-year-old victim through a matrimonial website between November 2023 and February 2024. The woman, originally from Narsinghpur in Madhya Pradesh, had been in contact with the accused, who assured her of marriage. However, he allegedly exploited this trust to establish physical relations with her on multiple occasions, taking her to various hotels across Thane district.