The Airport Police apprehended a New Jersey resident originally from Anand district at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International (SVPI) Airport upon his arrival from Dubai on Saturday evening for possessing another man’s passport.
As per the FIR, during the immigration clearance, the system revealed that the passport presented by the 43-year-old Alpesh Patel belonged to one Mohammed Masrur. Further checks using the PRIDE (Passport-Related Information Data Exchange) system confirmed that the passport had been reported as lost.
The passport was issued to Mohammed Masrur, a resident of Saifullaganj in Sultanpur district, Uttar Pradesh, on July 7, 2022. It infers that Alpesh Patel presented a fraudulently obtained Indian passport for immigration clearance. He has been handed over to the police for further investigation.
The airport police have registered a complaint against Patel for cheating by personation, forgery, and using a forged document as genuine under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), along with violations of the Passport Act. It is learned that Patel’s original passport expired in 2010, and he renewed it afterward. When it expired again in 2022, he enlisted the help of an agent from Gujarat living in New York, who provided him with the already reported stolen passport.