New Delhi, Aug. 2: A query triggered by a parliamentarian's loss has prompted the government to unzip baggage data that suggest India's airports are getting increasingly theft-prone.
Airports across the country cumulatively documented 114 cases of baggage theft last year, a 50 per cent increase over the number during the previous year, the Union civil aviation ministry has told Parliament.
The Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi alone accounted for 67 of the cases last year, and has already registered 28 among the 47 such incidents reported between January and May this year, the ministry said in a report tabled in the Lok Sabha last week.
B.V. Nayak, the Congress MP from Raichur constituency in Karnataka, lost Rs 2 lakh in cash while travelling from Bangalore to Hyderabad in May this year. The theft had prompted him to ask the government whether "the number of cases of baggage theft has increased in the country during the last three years".
Recalling the incident, Nayak today told The Telegraph he felt something amiss when he noticed that two knobs on his suitcase were broken when he collected it at Hyderabad airport.
"I immediately checked and found that while clothes and documents kept inside were there, Rs 2 lakh in notes I had kept in the suitcase were missing - I felt violated," he said.
"I had taken an Air India flight, so I immediately took up the matter with airline staff at Hyderabad airport but they said the theft could not have taken place after check-in, it would have happened during scanning of the luggage - which I think is an unbelievable explanation."
02/08/15 Sumi Sukanya/The Telegraph
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Airports across the country cumulatively documented 114 cases of baggage theft last year, a 50 per cent increase over the number during the previous year, the Union civil aviation ministry has told Parliament.
The Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi alone accounted for 67 of the cases last year, and has already registered 28 among the 47 such incidents reported between January and May this year, the ministry said in a report tabled in the Lok Sabha last week.
B.V. Nayak, the Congress MP from Raichur constituency in Karnataka, lost Rs 2 lakh in cash while travelling from Bangalore to Hyderabad in May this year. The theft had prompted him to ask the government whether "the number of cases of baggage theft has increased in the country during the last three years".
Recalling the incident, Nayak today told The Telegraph he felt something amiss when he noticed that two knobs on his suitcase were broken when he collected it at Hyderabad airport.
"I immediately checked and found that while clothes and documents kept inside were there, Rs 2 lakh in notes I had kept in the suitcase were missing - I felt violated," he said.
"I had taken an Air India flight, so I immediately took up the matter with airline staff at Hyderabad airport but they said the theft could not have taken place after check-in, it would have happened during scanning of the luggage - which I think is an unbelievable explanation."
02/08/15 Sumi Sukanya/The Telegraph
