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Mumbai: Why was 51-year-old Vikram K Bhalerao booked by authorities after landing at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport?
No, he wasn’t carrying contraband and all his documents were in order. Only a few pages were missing from his passport.
Bhalerao, a resident of Pune, returned to Mumbai via Vietnam after a weeklong trip to Indonesia. Eyebrows were raised when he handed over his passport and boarding pass to immigration authorities at the airport. While going through the passport, the official at the counter noticed several pages missing.
According to Rajiv Ranjan Kumar, the immigration official who lodged the complaint against Bhalerao, pages 17-18 and 21-26 were missing. They had clearly been torn off. On being questioned, the passenger was unable to give a satisfactory explanation as to why the pages had been torn off.
Bhalerao was then taken to senior officials and another round of interrogation started. Finally, the man broke down and said that he had torn off the pages to hide the fact that he had travelled to Bangkok in Thailand on four occasions over the last one year.
Immigration officials registered a complaint at the Sahar Police Station, following which Bhalerao was booked under Section 12 of the Passports Act and Section 318(4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. Defacing a passport or tearing off pages is a crime in India.
The man may well have travelled to Thailand on legitimate business but his plight highlights the kind of scrutiny that Indian males face by friends and family after travelling to Thailand – and particularly Bangkok – by their own.
