Your lost luggage is just a click away

Forgot your laptop or a favourite leather jacket at the airport? Don’t fret – retrieving it is now just a click away, reports HT Correspondent.

Forgot your laptop or a favourite leather jacket at the airport? Don’t fret – retrieving it is now just a click away.

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The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), in-charge of security at all civil airports in the country, has started uploading details of items left behind by passengers on www.cisf.nic.in since October 4.

The online facility has proved so popular that the number of hits (visitors) on the website has gone up six times.

“Our official website usually gets around 35,000 hits every month but in the last 17 days — since the lost and found data was uploaded — we have had 1,10,337 hits,” said CISF spokesperson Rohit Katiyar.

The number of passengers coming back to claim lost items too have increased by about 50 per cent, he added.

CISF personnel at the airport regularly find items left behind by passengers. Those most commonly found are laptops and cellphones, but anything from pens to pickles are diligently collected and efforts are made to locate owners.

When the owner is not found, the items are deposited with the airport manager.

Thanks to the new online facility, passengers can select the airport and date when they lost their belonging from the list of such items. The site also provides contact details of respective airport managers.

“There is a definite increase in the number of claimants since the online service started. Such items are kept at the airport manager’s office for 48 hours and then deposited in our lost and found store,” said a spokesperson of airport operator Delhi International Airport Ltd. (DIAL). After three months, the items are auctioned.

Till August, the CISF have found lost items worth Rs 8.7 crore at 57 airports. Of these, items worth Rs 2.3 crore were found at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport alone.