Wronged twice, Kasaragod man to fly to Dubai in two days; Passport office says it ‘forgot’ to update system

Kasaragod: After twice being wrongly stopped at airports and losing nearly ₹60,000 in cancelled tickets, Kolathingal Sreenivasan (52), a debt-ridden construction worker from Arayi in Kanhangad, is set to fly back to Dubai in two days.

The Regional Passport Office (RPO) in Kozhikode has admitted to failing to update its system despite receiving a police clearance and has now issued a written clearance certificate. "They gave me my passport back, and a clearance certificate too. They said they forgot to update the system last time," said Sreenivasan.

Sreenivasan's ordeal began with a case of mistaken identity. In 2017, shortly after he renewed his passport, Hosdurg police in Kanhangad flagged it over a criminal case. But the case was against another man named T Sreenivasan, a tile mason living about a kilometre away. The two men not only shared a name but also had fathers with the same name, Kunhikannan. However, they belonged to different families -- Tharambil and Kolathingal -- and were unrelated.

When officers from Hosdurg Police Station in Kanhangad came home inquiring about T Sreenivasan, Kolathingal Sreenivasan told them that he was not the person they were looking for.

Despite clearly informing them, the police sent a report to the Regional Passport Office (RPO) in Kozhikode flagging Kolathingal Sreenivasan's passport. By them, he has flown to Ajman in the UAE. During his absence, the RPO is understood to have issued show-cause notices to his home address. With no response, the alert remained in the system.

Sreenivasan returned home and worked in Kanhangad for five years. But as he was struggling with mounting debts, Sreenivasan decided to return to Dubai for work. On January 15 this year, he flew from Mangaluru to Mumbai, from where he was to board a flight bound for Dubai. Immigration officials at Mumbai airport stopped him just before departure, impounded his passport on the instructions of Kozhikode RPO, and sent it back to the Kozhikode office. He lost around ₹27,000 on that ticket.

When he reached Kozhikode, passport officials told him a criminal case was pending against him. With the case number, he approached the Hosdurg court and discovered that the case was against the other Sreenivasan.

Hosdurg police subsequently acknowledged the mix-up and sent a revised report clearing him. The RPO returned his passport.

Believing the issue had been resolved, Sreenivasan booked another ticket, this time from Kannur airport on February 24, spending nearly ₹20,000 more. But Immigration officials again stopped him, saying his passport continued to be flagged in the system.

Each time a passport is impounded, it is routed back to the issuing RPO. When Sreenivasan travelled to Kozhikode again this week, officials admitted that although they had received the police clearance and returned his passport earlier, they had "forgotten" to update the system.

With his visa set to expire on March 7, he had been racing against time to reach Dubai and start work. Already burdened with debt, the repeated harassment has cost him around ₹60,000. Fresh tickets are now available for about ₹15,000, he said. "I will be flying out in two days," he said.

For Sreenivasan, who supports his wife, two school-going children and an aged mother, the correction has come as a relief. However, far from offering any compensation for the financial and emotional toll caused by the bureaucratic lapse, the Passport Office did not formally acknowledge its mistake. The "release" certificate issued by Regional Passport Officer Arunmohan K merely stated that the passport had been returned to Sreenivasan "due to the reason after meeting with the applicant" (sic).