Indian man arrested for tearing out passport pages to hide Thai trip

We all have secrets from our past, and some may go to great lengths to hide them, especially from their family or their mates. But a man in Pune, India went a little too far when he was arrested for tearing out pages from his passport before getting married to hide trips to Thailand from his wife.

The man was arrested on Thursday at Mumbai International Airport in India while trying to board a flight to the Maldives. Officials at the airport noticed that pages were missing from his passport, appearing to have been torn out. The man’s lawyer claims that the passport had a loose binding and pages fell out on their own than were lost. But officials are not buying the claim that the man did not tamper with his passport himself.

It is reported that the 32 year old man tore out at least 10 pages from his passport in 2019 as he prepared to marry his now wife, allegedly to cover up his travel history to hide the fact that he had travelled to Thailand. Perhaps he feared that his bride-to-be would assume he made trips to the Land of Smiles for a ‘happy ending.’

The man from Pune, India’s seventh most populous city, tried to check in for his flight at Mumbai International Airport with a passport that was missing pages 3 to 6, and 31 to 34. He appeared before an Indian court on Friday and was released on bail, paying the equivalent of about 11,000 Thai baht.

While many may try to hide evidence to cover up past indiscretions, passports are federally issued official documents, making tampering or intentionally damaging them a crime in most countries. India is no exception, where tearing out the pages resulted in the man being charged under the Indian penal code sections 420 for cheating, 460 for forgery, 468 and 471 for using a forged document or electronic record as genuine, as well as under the Passport Act.

Some advice: if you’re trying to cover up your wild trip to Thailand from your spouse, maybe just get a new passport?

SOURCE: Money Control