NEW DELHI: In what can be termed a scene right out of a Bollywood potboiler, a 32-year-old man hired the services of a make-up artist to make him appear 50 years older than his real age. His ingenious plan was to impersonate an 81-year-old to hoodwink authorities at the Indira Gandhi International Airport and board a flight to the United States.
The man is now cooling his heels behind bars after the CISF caught him in the act and handed him over to the police. The man, identified as Jayesh Patel, is a resident of Ahmedabad.
Patel was convinced that his visa application on his original passport would be rejected by the US consulate and that his dream to find a job in the United States would come crashing down.
He met an agent who laid out an elaborate plan to transform Patel into an octogenarian.
The agent fixed Patel up with another accomplice in Delhi who in turn procured a fake passport and visa in the name of Amrik Singh.
The second agent also arranged for a make-up artist.
The make-up artist, however, did a half-baked job, quite literally. While he dyed the man’s beard and moustache in grey and white, he did not extend the same treatment to his head.
A few strands of jet black hair remained visible under his white turban. In addition to that, the make-up man did not apply any layers on the man’s face to conceal his smooth and flawless skin.
Both these aspects gave Patel away at the security check when he was asked to step on to a podium for his screening.
Patel, who was booked to travel to New York by flight AI 101 on Sunday night, was seated on a wheelchair and refused to make eye-contact with the sub-inspector on duty.
His passport mentioned his date of birth as February 1, 1938. “The appearance and skin texture of the passenger seemed to be that of a much younger person than mentioned in the passport. He had coloured his beard and was also wearing zero power glasses to conceal his age,” CISF said.
Filmi connection
Actor Kamal Hasan had used an international make-up artist to transform into a 70-yr old ex-freedom fighter-turned- vigilante for a role in the film Indian (1996)