In a bizarre turn of events, son of a J&K politician was detained in Bulgaria when he was travelling in a vehicle with Ukraine registration plates which actually belonged to Ukrainian supermodel Anna Durytska. Ankit Love, 38, son of Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (NPP) supremo Bhim Singh, was questioned by the Bulgarian police for seven hours after he was detained near the Godech town last Wednesday.
According to reports, Ankit was driving a Rs 1.6 crore Mercedes G400d. When the police inquired about it, they found the vehicle belonged to Model Anna Durytska, who, after fleeing Ukraine during the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war, has sought asylum in Britain. Asked how he he was driving her vehicle, Ankit said the model was her “long-time friend” and he was “helping” to get the car and some of her belongings out of Ukraine.
Durytska, according to reports, could not leave the UK as she was finalising her asylum status. As such Love offered to fly to Bulgaria, fetch her car and belongings that the model had kept with a friend, and then drive back to the UK with the Mercedes via the Channel Tunnel that connects Great Britain with the European mainland.
Reports quoting him said Ankit and Durytska became friends after they met during a holiay on a ferry travelling from Ibiza to Barcelona.
““As I was driving out of Bulgaria in the Mercedes, Bulgarian police stopped me near Godech. They saw the Ukrainian license plates and me, a brown man with a different accent and a British passport,” he says. He claims the Bulgarian police removed the Ukrainian license plates from the car, and made Love hand over the keys and car registration documents,” The Print quoted him saying.
The drive from Sophia Province, Bulgaria to London is approximately 27-hours long. Asked how he was prepared to embark on such a journey, Love said: “I’ve dabbled in Formula 4 racing before so it didn’t seem like such a task.”
While Love was not able to drive back the Mercedes, he, according to the report, flew back to the UK along with the model’s designer clothes worth $100,000.
Love was born in 1983 in New Delhi and briefly attended a boarding school called Bishop Cotton School in Shimla. His father, Bhim Singh, is the founder and president of the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party. Singh was known to be a close friend of ousted Iraq President Saddam Hussein and mourned his execution in 2006.
