A 51-year-old resident of Pune, V. K. Bhalerao, was arrested on Sunday at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport after returning from a holiday in Indonesia. The arrest was made after immigration officials discovered that several pages of his passport had been deliberately torn out, a violation under the Passports Act, 1967.
During a routine check, immigration officers noticed that pages 17/18 and 21 to 26 were missing from Bhalerao’s passport. These pages reportedly contained immigration stamps from four trips he had made to Bangkok last year. Assistant immigration officer Rajiv Kumar lodged a formal complaint, prompting Sahar police to take Bhalerao into custody.
Initially, Bhalerao refused to disclose the reason for the tampering. However, after sustained questioning by immigration officials and police officers, he confessed that he had removed the pages to hide his trips to Bangkok from his family.
In addition to the charge under the Passports Act for wilfully damaging a passport, Bhalerao has also been booked under Section 318(4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) for deceiving a person or fraudulently or dishonestly inducing a person to deliver property. The investigation is ongoing.