Colaba police on Tuesday traced and recovered the luggage of two Sudanese nationals 24 hours after they had forgotten it in a taxi.
The police said that Mohammed Hasan (22) and Abdul Yakub (39) landed in the city on Tuesday morning and took a taxi from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Andheri to Hotel Sea View in Colaba. They realised they had forgotten their bags containing cash and passports when they reached the hotel and rushed to Colaba police station to register a complaint.
Senior Police Inspector Vijay Dhopavkar, Colaba police station, said, “We scanned 20 to 25 CCTV cameras in our jurisdiction, but we could not find footage clearly capturing the taxi’s licence plate number. However, CCTVs installed on Bandra Worli Sea Link had captured the taxi the number. We then obtain the taxi’s registration details.”
The police found that the driver stayed in Malad and bought the taxi using a loan from Nagpada branch of Mercantile Cooperative Bank. The police visited the bank and secured his mobile number. When the driver did not answer repeated calls to his phone, the police sent a team to his house. The team found that the driver had sold his house seven years ago following a family dispute. Residents of the area told the police that the driver plied in Santacruz and slept in his taxi.
Mr. Dhopavkar said, “We sent a team to the airport and inspected around 700 cars parked in the taxi stand. We also constantly dialled his number, and he finally answered on Tuesday evening. He told us that he had come to Sahar police station to hand over the bags. We spoke to the duty officer and rushed to the station.”
The bags contained ₹1.87 lakh in dinars, ₹48,000 in U.S. dollars and ₹2 lakh in euros were returned to the Sudanese nationals on Tuesday evening.
