US woman arrested for faking her kidnapping in India

An American woman was detained by police in Delhi, the capital of India, on suspicion of arranging her kidnapping.

According to authorities, the 27-year-old woman pretended to be kidnapped to "blackmail" her parents into sending money when she ran out of money.

Local media said that the woman arrived in India on May 3.

On July 7, she called her mother and claimed a man was assaulting her, according to NDTV.

After receiving a report from her family from the US Embassy, Delhi police started looking for her location.

According to the Indian Express newspaper, they tracked the IP addresses from which the woman made a video call to her mother and wrote an email to American Citizen Services.

Based on this information, they tracked down and detained a 31-year-old Nigerian man who admitted during questioning that the woman was residing in an apartment in Noida, a city outside of Delhi.

According to Amrutha Guguloth, the deputy commissioner of police for New Delhi, "after her recovery, it was revealed that she had manufactured the event to blackmail her parents."

The woman, who is from Washington, DC, had met the man over Facebook, according to the police, and had been residing with him ever since she got to India.

The man's passport and the woman's visa were also determined to be expired.

The two were warned by the authorities that they would face punishment for residing in India without proper documentation.