MUMBAI – If this crazy idea of exchanging boarding passes for travelling to a different country crossed your mind, you should be aware that it is not legal.
The same idea popped up in the minds of two foreigners in India who exchanged their boarding passes in the rest room of Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport after clearing security and immigration.
The two people – a Sri Lankan national and a German citizen – hatched the plan after discussions at a local hotel. The 22-year-old Sri Lankan who wanted to go to the UK for a better career opportunity had a boarding pass meant for Nepal’s Kathamandu while the 36-year-old German national was supposed to fly to London.
The Sri Lankan national was able to reach the UK only to see himself arrested and deported back to Mumbai on Tuesday after he revealed his true identity. The departure stamp number on his passport – which was fake – was different from the number on his boarding pass; on the other hand, the German national was also caught by police.
During the interrogation of the incident, it was revelaed that both stayed in a fancy hotel near the airport in Mumbai on April 9 and hatched the plan to swap their boarding passes.
The police have booked two persons under sections for cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy and probe is underway to find whether there are other people involved in the incident or not.
If you also thought about taking a visa for a third world country and then exchanging it with any passenger flying to Europe or Schengen zone, don’t think about executing this plan. Even if you are able to reach the country of your choice like the Sri Lankan citizen, your fraudulent act can be caught very easily by immigration control officials who are very conscious about passenger checking and clearing them after completing the formalities including the biometric verification in some cases.
