Padma Poojary passport forgery case

The Padma Poojary passport forgery case is the legal turning point that transformed the wife of gangster Ravi Poojary from a shadowy figure in her husband's criminal enterprise into a fugitive in her own right. The case, which came to light only in 2005, exposed a decade-old fraud and set in motion a chain of events that ended with Padma fleeing India through the Nepal border, her location remaining a mystery even five years after her escape. It is a story of how a woman who shrewdly kept away from the gang's activities and escaped police scrutiny with consummate ease was finally undone not by her involvement in crime but by the mundane act of renewing her passport.

The Discovery of the Forgery

Padma's first brush with the law came in 1995, when she obtained a passport on the basis of a forged ration-card and school-leaving certificate. The matter lay dormant for a full ten years, until 2005, when she sent her passport for renewal and applied for passports for her children. It was this routine administrative act that undid her. The passport authorities grew suspicious while scrutinising her passport forms and immediately tipped off the Mumbai police's Crime Branch. On conducting inquiries, the Crime Branch learned that not only were the documents submitted for Padma's children's passport applications fake, but those submitted by her to procure a passport in 1995 had also been forged. The discovery revealed that Padma had been operating under false documentation for over a decade, a fact that had gone completely unnoticed by the authorities.

The Arrest and Its Aftermath

Padma had used the forged passport to travel to several countries in Africa and the Middle East. The police suspected that, during her course of travel, she had met her absconding husband, who had taken refuge in a foreign country. Her passport was seized and she was arrested on 4 October 2005. Padma was only released on bail some thirty days later. Her lawyer Shyam Keswani repeatedly denied her role in handling her husband's financial affairs. 'There is no truth in the police's claims,' he insisted. The police, too, did not have any evidence to book her for assisting Ravi in his activities. The arrest, however, had a profound effect on Padma's circumstances. Following her arrest and bail, she came under police scrutiny. With her phone lines tapped and her whereabouts monitored by the police, Padma was left with no option but to flee the country.

The Escape and the Red Corner Notice

According to the police, Padma escaped from India via the Nepal border after acquiring a new fake passport. The police only managed to arrest the person who planned her escape. The Maharashtra police had issued an Interpol Red Corner Notice against Padma. The International Criminal Police Organisation, or Interpol as it is commonly known, spans 186 countries and assists national police in apprehending criminals. A Red Corner Notice is an indicator (in the form of a red flag) that pops up on the attendant's monitor if the person tries to check in at an airport, informing the attendant that this person is wanted. However, despite Interpol's backing, the police could not track Padma down and even five years after her escape, her location remains a mystery. The police believes that she is living with her husband and has narrowed down the location of her hideout to somewhere in South Africa.

Padma's Role in Ravi's Criminal Enterprise

The passport case was not Padma's first involvement in her husband's criminal world, though it was the first time she was caught. By early 2000, Ravi had become one of Rajan's closest aides. However, barring the fact that he belonged to Rajan's gang, he did not have any extraordinary achievements or credentials that he could call his own. For a man who had always wanted to carve a niche for himself in the underworld, the realisation that he was a mere cog in the Rajan machinery was very disturbing. According to police sources, it was during this time that Padma advised Ravi to deviate from the Rajan gang and start his own enterprise. She also allegedly suggested that he look at Bollywood and the business classes—the real mine of wealth. Following his wife's advice, Ravi left the Rajan gang and recruited men from Mumbai to work for him, even as he continued to operate from Southeast Asia. Extortion calls began to be made to bigwigs in the city. In 2006, Poojary's men opened fire at Bollywood director Mahesh Bhatt's office, after he refused to give in to Ravi's extortion demands. Poojary also tried to extort Rs 50 crore from Bollywood actress Karisma Kapoor's Delhi-based businessman husband Sanjay Kapur. Padma shrewdly kept away from the gang's activities and escaped police scrutiny with consummate ease, making her eventual exposure through the passport case all the more striking.

The Cultural Legacy and Unresolved Ending

Though Padma's criminal record is relatively less riddled with criminal activities as compared with Sujata Nikhalje, the wife of Chhota Rajan, she is the only wife of a Hindu gangster to have been portrayed on celluloid. A B-grade Bollywood film called World Cupp 2011, which released in early 2010, portrayed Padma Poojary as a hardcore drinker and the queen of cricket betting rackets, who bribed police authorities and government officials. The director of the film was later threatened by Ravi for portraying his wife in a negative light. Padma's story cannot quite carry a 'The End' card, since it's impossible to predict the kind of designs Padma has drawn up for the future as chief architect of Ravi's gang's criminal activities. The passport forgery case, which was meant to bring her to justice, instead became the catalyst for her disappearance, leaving her story permanently open-ended.