Mumbai: A 33-year-old businessman from Satara, Tushar Pawar, was arrested by the Sahar police on Saturday for allegedly altering his passport to hide his international travels from his wife. Pawar had reportedly made multiple trips to Thailand with friends in 2023 and 2024, which he had kept secret from his spouse by replacing the stamped pages of his passport with blank ones.


The incident came to light at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, where Pawar was apprehended while attempting to board a flight to Bangkok. An Immigration Bureau official, Aastha Mithal, noticed discrepancies in his passport during routine checks. 


"While processing Pawar's passport for his flight to Bangkok on AI-330, the immigration officer detected that 12 pages had been tampered with and substituted with blank ones," stated an officer from Sahar police station.


Unable to provide satisfactory explanations for the alterations, Pawar was brought to Prashant Sawant, the wing in-charge, who, along with the duty officer, further interrogated him. Pawar confessed that he had traveled to Thailand with friends over the past two years without informing his wife, and had modified his passport to conceal these trips.


Given the illegal modifications to the passport and his attempt to travel under these false pretenses, the authorities filed a case against Pawar under section 318 (4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for cheating, along with relevant sections of the Indian Passport Act, 1967.