Pune
oi-Gaurav Sharma
A Pune businessman had disappeared after reaching Mumbai airport, his phone was unreachable and his worried wife was left with an alarming explanation about an immigration problem. She eventually approached the police, triggering a kidnapping investigation.
But when the businessman finally walked into a Mumbai police station, the mystery took an entirely different turn.
A Pune businessman, initially reported missing from Mumbai airport and feared kidnapped, admitted to fabricating an immigration problem story to hide a failed secret trip to Kuala Lumpur with a woman friend; police will file a C Summary closure report.
Police said the 46-year-old laundry business owner had not been kidnapped. Instead, investigators allegedly discovered that he had gone off the radar after a secret travel plan fell apart.
The businessman had reportedly told his wife that he was travelling for work. Police later found that he had planned to fly to Kuala Lumpur on September 14 with a woman friend.
The plan came to a halt at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport.
According to police, immigration officials stopped the woman after discovering that she was carrying an old passport that she had previously reported as lost. The international journey was abandoned.
That was when the businessman allegedly came up with another story.
Police said he switched off his mobile phone and left the airport with the woman, travelling towards Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus. Before leaving the airport, he reportedly called his wife from a landline and told her that immigration officials had forced him to surrender his phone because of a travel-related issue.
The next day, he allegedly repeated the same explanation during a brief WhatsApp video call.
Then he disappeared from her reach again.
With no clear information about where her husband was, the woman went to the police on Wednesday. A kidnapping FIR was registered, and what appeared to be a missing-person case quickly became a police investigation.
The twist came later that night.
After learning that an FIR had been registered, the businessman reportedly turned up at Sahar police station. During questioning, police said he admitted that the immigration explanation was fabricated.
Investigators concluded that there was no kidnapping. Instead, the businessman had allegedly chosen to remain unreachable after his overseas travel plans collapsed and had concealed the real circumstances from his wife.
Police are now expected to submit a “C Summary” closure report before the court within two weeks. Officials said such a report is used when a case stems from a genuine mistake of fact or when the allegations are found to be neither completely true nor completely false.
The case began with fears of an abduction.
It ended with police uncovering something far less sinister-but considerably more complicated: a cancelled flight, a secret companion, an invented immigration problem and a disappearance that was allegedly of the businessman’s own making.
