PUNE: A 55-year-old woman surreptitiously lifted a designer bag from a store in Pune airport this week, leaving its representative at the edge. Stopped about a couple of hours later and over 1,000km away in Delhi airport, she was let go after she paid for the lifted item.
Perfect coordination among the CISF personnel in Pune and Delhi airports made it possible. The job of Pune airport’s store representative was thus saved.
The incident, according to sources, occurred on January 27 afternoon. The woman was to fly from Pune to Delhi in an Air India flight (AI-2998). It departed at 5.09pm and landed in Delhi at 7.08pm.
A Pune airport official said, “The representative of the designer bags’ store ran to some CISF personnel when the Air India’s Delhi flight was about to take-off with the complaint that a bag worth Rs10,000 was missing. This set off an alarm, and the CISF personnel swung into action.”
Officials went to the CCTV control room of the Pune airport and started scanning footage from all the cameras. “The woman, aged around 55 years, was spotted picking up the bag from the outlet and moving towards her boarding gate. We carefully monitored her movements and identified her with the help of the airline’s staffers. The flight had left for Delhi by then,” a CISF official said.
“We retrieved the woman’s details and pictures, and immediately relayed them to our counterparts at the Delhi airport. Once the aircraft landed in Delhi, the CISF men intercepted the woman and questioned her about the bag. After some discussions, she admitted to having shoplifted the bag. There is a store of the same brand at the Delhi airport, but its officials didn’t show any interest in lodging a police complaint even after we encouraged them to do so. In the end, the woman had to pay for the bag. Then she was allowed to leave the airport,” the official said.
“If we had taken the incident lightly, the store manager would have probably lost his job. Shoplifting is a common affair in many airports worldwide. Passengers should be aware that such acts will lead to consequences,” the official added.
