For Tahammul Ahmed, a taxi driver from Cuffe Parade, the bag containing Rs. 3.5 lakh in cash that a passenger forgot in his cab was a fortune, but the 40-year-old handed it over to the police. What is puzzling him and the Wadala police is that no one has claimed it or approached them with a complaint.
Mr. Ahmed said he noticed the bag under the front passenger seat after dropping three foreign nationals from Gulf Hotel in Colaba to Wadala in the afternoon on May 27. “The trio were conversing in Arabic, which I could make out as I have worked in Kuwait for nine years. When I saw the bag, I found that it was filled with Rs. 500 notes,” he said.
His next fare was Altaf Bhat, a social activist, who advised him to take the bag to Colaba police station. Mr. Ahmed, who has been a cabbie in Mumbai for 13 years, lives with his brother in a small shanty in Cuffe Parade and works hard to earn enough money every day to sustain himself as well as to send some amount to his family in Uttar Pradesh.
“Only money can not earn you respect, but honesty can. I hope the money reaches the right hands. I don’t even keep any loose change that I find in my cab occasionally. I give it away to beggars. A relative of mine once forgot his hammer in my cab just before he went on a trip out of the city. I kept it with me till he returned and gave it back to him,” he said.
In order to further ensure he would not veer from his decision, he refrained from contacting any of his friends and telling them about the bag, afraid that they would try to convince him to keep it.
“A lot of my friends later did exactly that, telling me that I should not have given it to the police. But what if the passengers were carrying the money to be used for a medical or other emergency? How could I have cheated them?”
His honesty earned him the appreciation of the Colaba police, and he was felicitated in the police station on Thursday by Senior Police Inspector Vinay Gagdil, Colaba police station.
“The bag has no claimants. It will remain with us for some time, after which we will file an application in court. As per law, unclaimed money is to be deposited in a special account in the name of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate if it remains unclaimed for a specific period of time,” Mr. Gadgil said.
The writer is an intern with The Hindu
