A youth who had set off for London from Calcutta was stopped at Heathrow airport for possessing a passport forged mid-air.

Kamaljeet Singh, a taxi driver from Hosiarpur, Punjab, was sent back to Calcutta, where he has been arrested.

On Sunday, he submitted a statement to the officers at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, detailing the forgery.

Singh, 29, had a dream to settle down in London but could not obtain a UK visa. Sanjay Kumar, an alleged tout from Hosiarpur, now based in Delhi, promised to help him out.

On February 28, they came to Calcutta by train and took an Emirates flight to Dubai, from where they flew to Cairo on February 29. Kumar returned from Cairo, while Singh took an Emirates flight to London.

“He was carrying a genuine passport when boarding the flight from Calcutta,” said an official in the immigration department.

“On board the flight from Dubai to Cairo, Kumar removed Singh’s photograph from his passport and affixed it to one issued in the name of P. Nitin. There was a UK visa in Nitin’s name,” said Basab Talukdar, the foreigners’ regional registration officer in Calcutta.

Singh landed at Heathrow on March 1 and was detained by immigration officials. He was sent back to Calcutta on Sunday morning.

On Kumar’s advice, Singh did not board Emirates’s direct flight to London from Dubai as immigration checks are stringent there. “Boarding the direct flight with a fake passport is difficult, given the stringent checks in Dubai. So, the duo flew to Cairo, where it is easier to get away with forged passports. Singh had even managed to get an Egyptian visa for the trip,” said a source.

“Singh is claiming that he had not committed the crime. But he was surely a party to the forgery, as it was done in his presence,” said Talukdar.

Singh — a Class X dropout — is educated enough to know that pasting his photograph on someone else’s passport is a crime, the official added.