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Statutory warning: Your baggage is being watched everywhere in the high-security city airport — not by cops but by thieves.
In a shocker by even Calcutta airport standards, an offender who figures in the rogues’ gallery was caught after a chase across the domestic terminal building following an alarm from a passenger who saw the man rummaging his laptop bag near the conveyor belt on Monday morning.
Ushakant Janardan Sonawane, in his mid-fifties, tried to run out of the building but security personnel caught him near the arrival exit gate.
Officers from the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and the airport police station said Sonawane was part of a gang that stole valuables from passengers at various airports.
Sources said complaints from passengers about their goods and valuables being stolen from the Calcutta airport are frequent.
“Organised gangs apart, some loaders hired from private agencies are said to be the prime culprits,” said an airport official.
Prosenjit Nag, a businessman from Calcutta, was returning from a vacation in Port Blair. Nag, a resident of Cossipore in north Calcutta, arrived around 10.15am on an Air India flight along with his wife Sushmita, brother-in-law Sudip Sarkar and his family.
The two families had five pieces of checked-in luggage and Nag was carrying his laptop bag as cabin luggage.
“At the conveyor belt, I put the laptop bag on a trolley and was waiting for my baggage when I saw an elderly person trying to take the trolley,” said Nag. When confronted, the man apologised and slunk away.
As Prosenjit and Sudip got busy collecting and putting their bags on the trolley, Sudip’s daughter Sreya, in her teens, spotted a man in a white shirt rummaging her uncle’s laptop bag. “She raised an alarm and caught the man’s hand before he could take it out,” said Prosenjit.
The family raised an alarm and three CISF personnel rushed to the conveyor belt. The man meanwhile had freed himself and started running to the arrival exit gate. “Our men ran after him, caught him and handed him over to the police,” said a CISF officer.
Sonawane, a resident of Mumbai, had arrived at Calcutta airport on Monday morning on an Air India flight from Mumbai and was waiting at the conveyor belt for a soft target.
“The gang targets passengers who have many bags and are not paying attention to the one kept on the trolley after collecting those from the belt,” said an official.
Sonawane and two others were caught in the act at the Calcutta airport in July last year. “They were also arrested several times at Mumbai airport,” said an official.
Asked how he was standing unnoticed by security personnel despite his photograph being in the rogues’ gallery at the airport, an official said: “During rush hours, it is extremely difficult to track an individual passenger.”
On January 26, Dipanjan Purkayastha, the vice-president of an MNC, discovered that a Dell mobile phone, a Blu-ray player, an iPad keyboard, case and stylus and a toiletry kit were missing from his check-in baggage after arriving in the city by a Lufthansa flight from Boston.
The theft was detected only after he reached home as the locks were intact when he had collected the luggage from the conveyor belt at Calcutta airport.
There have been a few arrests on earlier occasions. “In one case, Group D staff members of the Airports Authority of India were caught on CCTV, picking up cellphones. In some cases, passengers as well as staff from outsourced agencies were arrested as they were tracked with the help of CCTV footage,” said an official.
Airport officials said there were several vulnerable points where items go missing from passengers’ luggage — the baggage make-up area, the security hold X-ray counter, and the arrival conveyor belt (see graphic).
Have you been a victim of theft at the airport? Tell ttmetro@abpmail.com
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