BHUBANESWAR:Commissionerate Police is giving a bad name to the Capital City with grievances of the tourists remaining unsolved. A non-resident Indian’s (NRI) handbag containing passports and other valuables was stolen outside the Biju Patnaik International (BPIA) on June 2, but the police are yet to trace the miscreants.
Talking to The Express over phone from Jalandhar, Neeraj Chandan, who is a native of Punjab and has been staying in Ghana for the last 12 years, said he was supposed to return on June 24, but had to extend his stay as the police have not traced the miscreant or the bag.
The police scanned the CCTV footage at the airport and found that a woman with one of her associates suspiciously left in a pink auto-rickshaw. “I came to know that there are about 400 pink auto-rickshaws in Bhubaneswar, and I was surprised that though the police have the records of all the vehicles, they have not nabbed the miscreants,” Chandan, who works as a chartered accountant, said.
The NRI said he had to apply for fresh passports for himself, his wife Alka and their sons Bhargav and Piyush in Jalandhar. “As there is no tatkal service for lost passports, we are facing a lot of problems,” he said. The NRI had earlier tweeted to External Affairs Minister, Odisha Chief Minister and Odisha DGP seeking their help, but to no avail.
Chandan had boarded Vistara Airlines flight from New Delhi to Bhubaneswar and reached BPIA at 8.30 pm on June 2 with his wife and two sons. While Chandan and his wife were greeting his friends, a miscreant stole the handbag kept on their trolley. The NRI later lodged a complaint with Airfield Police Station stating that he had kept four passports, four non-citizen cards issued by Ghana, 3000 USD, two iPhones and Samsung phone in the handbag.
“We suspect that a woman and her associate were involved in the crime. In the CCTV footage, the duo can be seen leaving the airport in a pink auto-rickshaw,” a policeman said.Meanwhile, Bhubaneswar DCP Anup Kumar Sahoo said they contacted pink auto-rickshaw’s association, but no substantial leads emerged. “We are investigating the matter and attempts are on to trace the miscreants involved in the theft of the NRI’s hand bag,” the DCP said.