You are right about certain unscrupulous Immigration/Custom officials at some notorious countries (mostly third world – corrupted/backward/mafia type) tearing off travelers’ passports of visas etc. in front of them even without their notice.

This being so as these valid visas may be made for re-use elsewhere; more importantly to cause panic for inattentive travelers and get them into trouble….

When traveling, one needs to be very careful with one’s passport and needs to keep an eye on it when presenting out to either airline officials, customs/immigration or others when checking in/out or going through Customs/Immigration.

I once had a bad experience in Italy many years ago.

At dawn, after a long hauled flight, I landed at Rome airport on transit to Israel. Since I was asked to get my next transit boarding pass in Rome (in those years, no E-ticket), I went to the airline transit counter with my passport/airticket/last boarding pass etc. My then physical condition was still half asleep.

At that wee hours, all shops were closed in the airport; in the transit counter, there were only two staff – one male and one female and no other passengers. It was dead quiet.

I walked over and presented my documents. In split seconds, I saw the lady shoving all my documents into the shaded non-visible area of the desk counter hiding everything. Then she told me again to present my documents. Initially I thought she was asking for something else, then she told me would you please let me have your passport etc. I looked at her hard in the face and told her, I already gave you everything.

She denied and told me where, you haven’t handed in anything to me. I told her to search carefully and then I pointed out to the hidden area where she easily pullled out all my documents.

She then helped me cut the ticket, without even saying sorry.

That was a valuable experience in my life. Keep good watch of your passport when traveling.

I do not want to speculate why this happened or imagine what would have happened should I were so stupid to not see what she did. It could be a nightmare experience – a disastrous one for me to be helpless and stranded in Rome.

You brought out an interesting point about the plight of Chee, the fact is once a person is born in India after independence you are eligible to hold a person of indian orign PIO card, once you become a naturalized citizen of foreign country. That would make life easier to live in India. Even easier you can apply directly to hold oversea indian passport, a dual citizenship.

As for your point 4, I believe you got to watch for some custom officers can rip the passport pages out with valid visa on it and accuse you of
messing with your passport, the idea is to on the look out when dealing with some corrupted custom officials. They could easily transfer your valid visa on to another passport and make money.

1) Being once an Indian citizen, presumably by birth, he needed to renounce his Indian Citizenship first before becoming Canadian Citizen ( fulfilling the residency requirements in Canada & had proper immigrant visa etc.). India does not recognize dual nationality. If he had no intention of returning back to India at all, i.e. leaving for good, then the renounciation could or could not happen as Canada allow dual nationality. However, it is still proper to do so.
2) Upon returning to India as a Canadian, and when his Canadian passport expired, there should be no problem for renewal at Canadian Commision in New Delhi. There ought to be something wrong or missing here.
3) If he had never renounced his Indian Citizenship which he was once, he could have re-applied his Indian Passport (however, need to renounce Candian Citizenship first at New Delhi) through normal channel without document falsification.
4) His last Indian Passport seemed to be tampered with in the first place, with 2 pages missing, so how could he be so naive to present himself out for suspicion & investigation by airport security officials.