Thaindian News

New Delhi, April 13 (IANS) In a plot straight out of Bollywood, an Indian Army doctor faked his suicide to elope with a senior officer’s wife but failed to factor in sleuths of the military intelligence (MI) directorate who tracked him down and jailed him. In between, the doctor, a major in the Army Medical Corps (AMC) even set up practice as a cancer surgeon at a hospital in Sangli in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. So confident was he of the ruse that he didn’t even think of changing his name.

The story, details of which have just come to light, begins last June when the major, then posted at an army hospital in Assam’s Tinsukia district, crafted what he thought was an ingenious ploy to quit the army.

The officer’s car was found on the banks of the Brahmaputra river with a “suicide” note saying he was unhappy with his life and was taking the “extreme step”.

Three months later, MI sleuths tracked him down to a private hospital in Sangli, where he had begun life anew as a surgeon.

The major was arrested in September 2007 and cashiered from service earlier this year.

Detailed investigation and surveillance by a team of MI officers had led to the arrest, but the missing link in the story was the wife of a colonel from the Regiment of Artillery who had also disappeared from Tinsukia at the same time and was found to be living with the major as his “wife” in Sangli.

The names of the two individuals have been kept under wraps given the sensitive nature of the case.

Sources say the dual disappearances raised the antennae of the MI, which “meticulously” followed this lead.

After zeroing in on the major in Sangli, an MI team established a surveillance network and exposed the officer.

Investigations revealed that the major, whose wife was posted on a UN mission, fell in love with the wife of a colonel who was also posted abroad on a UN mission - and cooked up a plan to desert the army and begin life afresh.