NEW DELHI: This real-life anti-climax had all the ingredients of a typical masala thriller.

A love triangle, estrangement and a faked suicide by the protagonist to escape the clutches of his wife, with the eventual aim of living happily ever after with his lady love, far from the restrictions of a disciplined Army life.

But it all came to naught following some smart work by military sleuths.

A doctor, a major in the Army Medical Corps, who faked his suicide to elope with a fellow officer���s wife, has now been cashiered from service after a court martial for "desertion" and "stealing the affections of a brother officer���s wife".

The intriguing story began in June 2007 when the doctor, posted at the military hospital at Dinjan cantonment in Assam���s Tinsukia district, left his car and a "suicide note" on the banks of the Brahmaputra.

The note said he was taking the extreme step since he was unhappy with his life.

The "body", however, was not found.

Around the same time, the wife of a colonel from the Artillery Regiment, too, went missing from the cantonment. The Army headquarters launched investigations to get to the bottom of the puzzling matter.

The doctor���s wife, also an Army doctor with the rank of a captain, was serving with a UN peace-keeping mission abroad.

The painstaking Army probe led to the conclusion that it was a love triangle and the major had, in all probability, faked his suicide.

Two persons going missing from the same Army establishment, one after the other, "raised eyebrows", said a source.

Three months later, in September, "some leads and intercepts" led the military sleuths to Niraj, Sangli, in Maharashtra.

The doctor, who was thought to have committed suicide, was busy at work there, practising as a cancer surgeon at a private hospital, with his lady love living with him as his "wife".

The doctor, who had begun his life anew in the civilian world, was promptly arrested and taken by the military police to the Kolkata-based Eastern Army Command for "disciplinary action" for desertion and other offences.

He was later court-martialled.

