Just four hours after an Information Technology professional forgot his laptop in an autorickshaw, the Vile Parle police traced the vehicle and handed over the laptop over to the owner.
The Vile Parle police said the complainant, Anurag Shukla, had hailed an autorickshaw to travel from his company’s Vile Parle branch to its Jogeshwari branch.
Mr. Shukla said, “I realised around 12 noon that I did not have the bag and rushed to the Vile Parle police station. The police were helpful and scanned the CCTV footage of the area where I boarded the auto. They then identified the vehicle.” However, the licence plate number was not clearly visible in the footage. The police from experience made a rough estimate of the alphabet-number combination. When the police failed to find any information on the Regional Transport Office website, they contacted the Andheri RTO.
The police learnt that the autorickshaw’s details had not been entered on the website as it had been registered before 2014, when the drive to digitise registrations began. Using the details obtained from the RTO, the police contacted the auto driver, Chandrakumar Saha (23).
“He confirmed that the bag was in the space behind the auto’s back seat. Even he had not realised that it was there till we had called him up,” said police sub inspector Mudassar Patel of Vile Parle police station.
By 4 p.m, the police handed over the bag with all its contents intact to Mr. Shukla, who was grateful as the laptop contained critical and confidential information about his firm.