New Delhi: Two passengers went off the radar after checking in their luggage at an airline counter, sending security personnel scurrying for answers at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here.
Amit Rajaram Chavan and Sheetal were due to fly from New Delhi to Munich and then to Toronto via London on the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday. They checked-in two bags at the airline counter but slipped away without collecting their boarding passes and did not return.
Worried, the airline crew approached the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which is tasked with guarding all commercial airports in the country. We alerted our entire surveillence and CCTV team, a senior CISF official said.
The surviellance footage did not show the couple exiting the airport terminal. Their bags were immediately sent for an explosives check but were found to contain nothing dangerous.
The CISF then deployed its CCTV monitoring team, which is tasked with combing through the footage of 3,000 cameras installed at the terminal, in the Security Operations Control Centre. In one surveillance video, the couple was seen entering a toilet but exiting in different attires, a CISF official said.
The Toronto-bound duo seemed to have changed their plans and instead opted for domestic travel, a senior CISF official said. "They were noted have to discarded their original itinerary and were trailed to have instead proceeded to the domestic departure by some domestic flight," the official said.
Several CISF teams were deployed to locate the couple's new flight and destination. Intensive scrutiny with a low-cost domestic carrier revealed the couple was headed for Pune under different names — Karan Patel and Megha Patel .
The CISF rushed to get them de-boarded but failed as the flight was in the late stages of departure.
The security personnel at IGI Airport immediately alerted their counterparts in Pune, who apprehended the couple as soon as the flight landed there.
Upon interrogation, the couple revealed their real identities were Karan Patel and Megha Patel, both residents of Ahmedabad. They said they were not married yet and were trying to emigrate to Toronto, Canada under forged passports.
They were flown back to Delhi and underwent joint interrogation by officials from the CISF, Delhi Police, Intelligence Bureau and Immigration.
They revealed they had procured the fake documents and tickets for travel to Pune from an agent who identified himself as Imran and had been present at the Delhi airport terminal as a co-passenger. Investigation revealed Imran had not boarded any flight and had exited the terminal building.
Details, documents and video surveillenace of all three were handed over to Immigration for further investigation.
The incident comes amid tight security protocols across major airports in the country in the wake of increased tensions with Pakistan after the Indian Army's surgical strikes at terror camp across the Line of Control last month.
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