Indian-origin businesswoman flies from UK to India on her husband’s passport

Team Udayavani, May 3, 2018, 2:59 PM IST

London: An Indian-origin businesswoman managed to travel from UK’s Manchester city to New Delhi on her husband’s passport before the security lapse was grabbed in India, demanding the Emirates Airline to conduct an investigation concerning the episode. 

Geeta Modha, who runs Alankar boutique in Rusholme of Manchester, left for the airport with husband Dilip’s passport on April 23.

The 55-year-old could check-in and board the flight and was waved through a stopover at Dubai on to New Delhi before the mistake was identified.

As a holder of Overseas Indian Citizenship (OCI), Ms Modha was to produce her passport at Delhi migration and was denied entry to India by then. 

“It’s alarming and stressing that individuals aren’t checking properly,” she said. “The reality they say they are so strict on security in airports however you can do this in 2018 is shocking. At check-in, the staff even made me move stuff from one bag to another because it was 2 kg over and yet let me travel with the wrong passport,” she said.

Indian experts made Ms Modha venture out back to Dubai to wait for her own passport, which was flown to her by Emirates. 

“Like all airplanes, we work intimately with our airport handlers to guarantee that all regulations relating to passport checks is taken very seriously. In this instance our usual high standards were not followed and we would like to apologise to Ms Modha,” a spokesperson of the airline said.

The airline said that airplane terminal handlers guaranteed that all staff are trained to  be updated with all regulations and security techniques. 

“We are right now examining how this episode happened and are functioning intimately with them to guarantee that all training materials aare properly reviewed and full retraining is provided for the staff involved,” the representative included. 

Ms Modha presented her passport at Manchester Airport amid check-in and again before getting onto her flight. Amid her scheduled stop-over in Dubai, she didn’t need to show her identification since she had an OCI card. The blunder was identified when she was filling her immigration form at Delhi Airport. 

Manchester Airport said it was the airline’s duty to check identity proof.