Indian Railways
Theft on Vishaka express

I was travelling on the Shirdi - Vishakapatnam Vishaka Express, having departed from the Sai Nagar Station [Shirdi] at 6:50pm on the 10th of September to disembark at the Secunderabad Junction. We were a group of five women, all relatives of mine, and were allocated seat numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the S2 compartment. As there were very few travellers in this train, only two second class compartments [S1 and S2] appeared to be satisfactorily occupied while the remaining seven coaches were more or less empty through the remainder of the journey.

As the seats were located near the exit doors of the coach, and three of the women were elderly by nature, we even requested the TTE to provide seats somewhere in the middle of the coach. He said that transferring a group of people ie.us, would not be possible, and told us that we could instead lock the doors of the coach at night, as nobody was expected to exit/ enter through the remainder of the night's journey. I slept off around 2 am in the morning and my relative was up around 5.30 am the next day.

At around 8am, when all of us were awake, we decided to transfer to a compartment in the middle, as the stench from the toilets were too much to handle. It was then we realized that an Infosys travel bag containing my mothers and my artefacts was missing.

Although there was no money or jewelery, it contained a Siemens hearing aid worth Rs. 22, 000 and is extremely difficult to replace.

We searched the entire train immediately and even went to locate the TTE so as to report the matter to him. However, he was not to be located in any of the compartments, even in the First Class AC Compartment, where a Railway Vendor reported him to be sleeping. The train arrived around 10am where in we disembarked and reported the matter to a police officer, Mr. Kodana Rao, of the Secunderabad Railway Police. He went in search for the train guard so as to locate the timings and stations the train had stopped at during the night. The guard was not available and the police officer, having heard the contents of the luggage, told us that filing the FIR was a lengthy procedure and downright told us to forget about the whole matter, as we were residents of Chennai and did not take any more interest in the matter.

The travel bag is a distictive blue and cream Infosys shoulder bag, with wheels. The distinctive contents include:

1. Siemens Hearing Aid (red colour) in a white dehumidifier box

2. Homeopathic kit which contains a list headed by the name of Dr. Premila Rajan and her phone number

3. Turakhia blue optical kit containg hair accessories.

4. A book called City of Glass by Alexandro Barisso.

5. Several sets of clothing and cosmetics.

The entire worth of the lost baggage is about 30, 000 rupees.

It is extremely shocking that the TTE was absent when we needed him, and that the Secunderabad Railway Police dismissed the entire matter, on hearing that the most important item was a hearing aid and refused to believe that it was worth 22, 000 rupees.

Company: Indian Railways
Country: India

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