Face recognition gone wrong: Noida man detained at Abu Dhabi airport returns

Indian citizen wrongly detained in the UAE over mistaken identity landed in India in the early hours of Sunday. Praveen Kumar, a Noida-based businessman, was detained at the Abu Dhabi airport as his face matched with a ‘wanted criminal’ in a face recognition software on October 11.

Kumar is a resident of Habibpur village in Greater Noida and works as a contractor for a cement company. He and his wife Usha were on a week-long leisure trip to Switzerland and had a connecting flight from Abu Dhabi.

“The company had offered the couple a trip to Switzerland, which was organised by a travel agency. They could not find a direct flight to Switzerland and boarded a flight to Abu Dhabi from Delhi after which they were supposed to take a flight to their destination. They had left on October 11 for the week-long trip,” said Atul Sharma, a relative of Kumar.

Usha said the immigration authorities at the airport took their passports and visas and the airport officers then took them to a separate room.

“They told my husband that he will be detained as his face matches that of a criminal wanted by Abu Dhabi police,” she said.

The family members were frantically tweeting their ordeal to external affairs minister S Jaishankar and other senior officials of the ministry to seek assistance in the matter.

After landing in India, Kumar said that CID there at the airport detained him but let him go for the first time. However, he was detained for the second time when he was on his way toward departure.

“They kept me overnight, forced me to accept I was someone else, put me in a holding cell in the morning, took me to a different city, held me and questioned me again. Would like to thank PM Modi and CM Adityanath for their quick action in the matter”, Kumar said after arriving in India, as quoted by ANI.