A 32-year-old engineer was arrested in Mumbai for allegedly removing some pages from his passport which is a criminal offence.

When he landed at the Mumbai airport after a foreign trip, immigration officials noticed that some pages from his passport were missing.

On being questioned, he revealed that he had torn out the pages with the visa stamps as he had gone to visit his girlfriend abroad and wanted to hide the fact from his wife.

He was apparently not aware that tampering with the passport is an offence, a police official said on Saturday.

When questioned by police, the man said he had gone abroad to meet his girlfriend after telling the wife that he was travelling for work in India.

He has been arrested under various sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC) including cheating and forgery and further investigation is being carried out, the police official said.