Baggage theft cases in airports rise sharply: govt

New Delhi, Mar 16: The number cases of baggage theft across the airports in the country rose by 67 per cent last year with 114 cases being reported during the period as compared to 2013, government said on Monday.

In 2013, 17 airports, including in Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata, had reported 53 cases of baggage theft, Lok Sabha was told. Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport, run by private operator GMR group, accounted for nearly 50 per cent (67 in actual terms) of the total number of cases in 2014.

The break-up for baggage theft cases in other airports for 2014 is: Chennai (7), Kolkata (12), Mumbai (21), Hyderabad (4), Imphal, Calicut and Amritsar (1 each).

Till February this year, 13 cases of baggage thefts were reported by passengers to police, with nine of them being from Delhi airport, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Mahesh Sharma said.

A total of 266 such cases were reported from 17 airports in the last three years, the Minister said in a written reply. Cases pertaining to the theft of baggage at airports are reported by complainants to local police or brought to the notice of the airlines concerned, he said.

The Minister said that the incident of theft are a law and order issue and the Ministry of Civil Aviation had no control or mandate over this data/information.

The local police, who are under the jurisdiction of the concerned state government, register and investigate such cases, he said.

Sharma said that several measures have been taken to prevent such incidents, adding the measures include frisking of ground-handling staff when they leave the airport, prohibition of use of mobile phones by the them in the airside, deployment of airline security staff in the baggage make-up and break-up area as well as around the cargo-hold area of the airline area among others.

PTI