In a bizarre incident last Sunday, a visiting NRI family from the US found that they had been relieved of valuables while on transit.
M. Rajyalaxmi and her daughter Shravanti from New York had declared items at the New Delhi airport and obtained clearance from immigration and customs officials before they boarded a domestic flight to Hyderabad.
The family was in for a shock once they reached the city as they found that a brand new iPad and a webcam worth over $900 were missing from their bag.
Thieves had meticulously broken open the lock of the bag with a knife, slit sealed boxes containing electronic gadgets and placed them back in their original position and resealed the zipper.
Fingerprints on the boxes indicate that a person familiar with shifting of baggage into the flight might have committed the crime, officials say.
“We picked up our bags and cleared them for immigration and customs in New Delhi and subsequently re-booked them for an AI-839 domestic flight at 7.30 p.m. to Hyderabad. Upon reaching here, we noticed that one of our suitcases had been tampered with and the lock was broken,” Shravanti explained.
Thinking the suitcase had been damaged in transit, they opened it at the airport and found all the boxes in place.
“When we reached home, we found that an iPad and a webcam were missing,” she says.
The family again came to the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Shamshabad on Tuesday and brought it to the notice of the airport manager, who suggested that they lodge a complaint through email.
“The situation is very unnerving and preposterous. We will appreciate your assistance in retrieving our missing gadgets, or a compensation for both, together worth $900,” she says, in the complaint.
