Pune businessman fakes immigration issue to hide trip with woman friend from wife

A Pune-based businessman who went incommunicado after reaching Mumbai international airport, triggering a kidnapping FIR by his worried wife, had allegedly made up an immigration problem to hide the fact that a woman friend was accompanying him on a trip he had described at home as strictly business, a police official said on Friday.

Police said the 46-year-old, who runs a laundry business, had planned to travel to Kuala Lumpur with the woman on September 14. The plan fell through after immigration officials found that she was travelling on an old passport that she had earlier declared lost. Faced with possible legal trouble and the likelihood that his wife would learn he was travelling with another woman, he allegedly invented a story about immigration issues.

According to the official at Sahar police station, after his woman friend was stopped by the immigration department, the businessman cancelled his journey, switched off his mobile phone and went with her to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus. Before leaving the airport, however, he called his wife from a landline and told her that he had to surrender his mobile phone because of an immigration issue.

The next day, he briefly spoke to his wife on a WhatsApp video call and repeated the same claim, the official said. When his phone later became unreachable, his wife approached the police on Wednesday, following which a kidnapping FIR was registered on the basis of her complaint.