Photo: Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) / edition.cnn.com
India’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, known best as Delhi Airport, is the 12th busiest airport in the world. With this kind of volume, you would imagine their security screeners are well versed in spotting suspicious individuals.
Well, you can’t blame this one guy for trying. A 32-year-old man desperate to catch an overnight flight to the United States, decked himself in a full disguise as an old man in an attempt to fool airport security into letting him pass. Had he paid more attention to detail, he might have had better chances at it.
Shrikant Kishore, a senior official with the Central Industrial Security Force, tells CNN that what gave the suspect away was the fact that he had forgotten to dye the roots of his hair, so that, while the rest of his hair and his beard were white, the roots were black. He also avoided the screener’s eye whenever he could, and that raised suspicions.
Either than that, he played a good game until he got caught. He was rolled into the airport on a wheelchair, supposedly because he was too “frail” to move on his own. He refused to stand for the screener and only reluctantly did so when he was told he had to – and he was offered support. He also had a fake passport, because of course.
“He posed as if he was very old and incapacitated,” Kishore says. His passport read Amrick Singh, 81 years old, but the screener noticed that this old man’s skin was also too youthful. “He was definitely not 80 years old. His skin was of a younger person,” adds Kishore.
The screener put two and two together, and the suspect got busted. He admitted that he was actually 32 and that his real name was Jayesh Patel. He was arrested and handed over to immigration authorities.
Kishore says he has no idea what Patel’s backstory might be or why he was so desperate to fly into the U.S. that he came up with this movie-like disguise. But he certainly picked the wrong place and the wrong airport security agent to try it on.
Shrikant Kishore, a senior official with the Central Industrial Security Force, tells CNN that what gave the suspect away was the fact that he had forgotten to dye the roots of his hair, so that, while the rest of his hair and his beard were white, the roots were black. He also avoided the screener’s eye whenever he could, and that raised suspicions.
Either than that, he played a good game until he got caught. He was rolled into the airport on a wheelchair, supposedly because he was too “frail” to move on his own. He refused to stand for the screener and only reluctantly did so when he was told he had to – and he was offered support. He also had a fake passport, because of course.
“He posed as if he was very old and incapacitated,” Kishore says. His passport read Amrick Singh, 81 years old, but the screener noticed that this old man’s skin was also too youthful. “He was definitely not 80 years old. His skin was of a younger person,” adds Kishore.
The screener put two and two together, and the suspect got busted. He admitted that he was actually 32 and that his real name was Jayesh Patel. He was arrested and handed over to immigration authorities.
Kishore says he has no idea what Patel’s backstory might be or why he was so desperate to fly into the U.S. that he came up with this movie-like disguise. But he certainly picked the wrong place and the wrong airport security agent to try it on.
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