Lankan-Indian swapping boarding passes nabbed

CHENNAI: An Indian and a Sri Lankan exchanging boarding passes before boarding a SriLankan Airlines flight bound for London via Colombo were nabbed by Immigration officials, at the Chennai Airport on Friday.

The vigilance teams of the airport immigration wing noticed them on the closed circuit television and immediately intercepted them. The sleuths found both were carrying Indian passports with the same name 'Sampath Kumar'.

On further verification, police recovered another Sri Lankan passport bearing the name Gangadharan from one of them. Gangadharan, 39, a native of Vavuniya had planned to leave for London. As he could not get a visa for his travel, he had come to Chennai as a tourist and had stayed here for more than six months. He approached Sampath Kumar, who was running a private travel agency, and asked him to prepare a fake Indian passport to travel to London.

Sampath Kumar devised a plan: he applied for a visa at the British embassy and got it. Meanwhile, he also forged an Indian passport for Gangadharan with the name 'Sampath Kumar'. He collected Rs 5 lakh from Gangadharan for faking the passport.

Sampath Kumar then booked himself a ticket for London via Colombo on

SriLankan Airlines (UL - 124) and also bought another ticket to Colombo for Gangadharan on the same flight.

The plan was to get the original Sampath Kumar to acquire a visa for UK and clear immigration formalities before exchanging seats with the fake Sampath Kumar on the stopover flight. The original Sampath Kumar would then get off at Colombo and return to India while the impersonator would fly to London.

On Friday night, the duo entered airport with their original passports and underwent all immigration and security checks. A few minutes before boarding, the two tried to exchange their boarding passes and got caught. They were handed over to the airport police on Saturday and were remanded in judicial custody.

- The Times of India