In yet another case of tearing pages from a passport to hide a Bangkok trip from his wife and family, a 51-year-old man from Pune was intercepted by immigration authorities at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport for the same act on Monday.
As per the report by TOI, he was booked for allegedly tearing pages from his passport in an attempt to hide past trips to Bangkok from his family.
The name of the accused is V. K. Bhalerao, and he has been booked under BNS Section 318 (4) (deceiving a person, or fraudulently or dishonestly inducing a person to deliver property).
Well, this is not the first time a man was held for this act. In July 2024, a man named Tushar Pawar, who is a logistics business operator and graduate, was held and booked.
He confessed to altering his passport to avoid a confrontation with his wife, who was unaware of his three earlier trips to Thailand in 2023 and 2024, as per a report by Times of India.
Similar case
In August 2024, a first-year student had torn four pages from her passport to conceal her earlier trip to Thailand, which she had taken from February 11 to 14, and was booked for the crime.
Tampering with passport pages, though not unheard of among Indian flyers, is a serious offence under the Passports Act, 1967. The law treats any modification or attempted alteration of a passport—whether done personally or through someone else without proper authorization—as a criminal act. Violators can face up to two years in jail, a fine of ₹5,000, or both as punishment.
