Mumbai Student Arrested for Tearing Four Pages of Passport to Hide Thailand Trip

Mumbai: A 25-year-old student studying fashion merchandising was detained at Mumbai airport on Thursday while attempting to board a flight to Singapore.

According to reports the accused, SS Ghatol,  was held after immigration officials discovered four pages in her passport missing.

Ghatol, a first-year student, was travelling on a tourist visa for an internship sponsored by her Worli-based institute.

According to police, she had teared he pages to secrete a previous trip to Thailand from February 11 to 14, during which she falsely claimed illness to skip an exam.

Assistant immigration officer Sujit Patil stated that Ghatol feared her deceit would be uncovered when her institute requested her passport after being shortlisted for the Singapore internship. Ghatol is now facing charges of cheating and violating the Passport Act.

The girl is charged under cheating violations under the passport act for lying to her college. 

In a similar case Tushar Pawar was arrested after Immigration Bureau official Aastha Mithal noticed irregularities in his passport during routine checks before his scheduled flight to Bangko.  Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that Pawar had removed 12 stamped pages and replaced them with blank ones.

The Sahar police detailed the incident, stating, "Tushar Pawar presented his passport for travel to Bangkok on flight AI-330. Upon scrutiny, the immigration officer found 12 pages tampered with, replaced by new ones." When questioned, Pawar admitted to altering his passport to conceal trips to Thailand in 2023 and 2024 from his wife. "He had to hide the travel history from his wife, so he inserted new pages in the passport," explained the police officer.