Student helps owner get back lost fitness tracker worth 60,000 in Bengaluru

BENGALURU: When Chethan Ram, who runs a cycle showroom in south Bengaluru, asked his colleague to get him an activity-tracking device on Tuesday morning, the latter said he was preoccupied. But seeing Chethan in a hurry, the colleague decided to send it through a delivery executive.
Chethan waited, but there was no sign of the device costing Rs 60,000. The duo, after exchanging several calls, realised that the executive had lost it somewhere on the way — it had slid from his shirt pocket while riding.
Asking the colleague not to worry, Chethan reached the stretch where the executive was commuting. Seeing the device owner right in front of him, the executive got nervous and broke down. Calming him down, Chethan got him breakfast from a nearby eatery and said: “Don’t worry, it’s only a device — and not a life — which is lost. Let’s search together.”
When the search did not yield result, the executive thanked Chethan for his gesture as it was his first day at work. Confident that he would get the device — his cycling activity tracker for six years — back if it landed in the hands of any athlete, Chethan made an appeal on social media handles (which connected cyclists) around 11am.
Around 8pm, Chethan got a call from an unknown number with the caller asking if he had lost any device. When Chethan said yes, the caller identified himself as Kumaravel and said the device is with him and that he can pick it up any time.
Wasting no time, Chethan reached the house of Kumaravel, a worker at a construction site in south Bengaluru. When asked where he got the tracker, Kumaravel said he found it on his way to work in the morning. “I kept it with myself thinking it’s a cellphone and that I would get a call from its owner,” he said, adding: “After reaching home in the evening, I showed it to my daughter Sandhya.”
The II PU student was savvy enough to realise it was not a phone. She tried to switch it on, but in vain — its battery had drained out. After she charged it, the father-daughter duo saw Chethan’s name and number popping up and immediately called him.
Chethan handed over a fruit basket to Kumaravel’s family and some cash to Sandhya, insisting she use it to meet her college-related expenses.
He then got into his car, called the delivery executive and broke the news: “I got back my device. I know what you have been going through because of guilt. This call is to wish you a good night’s sleep.”
A social media post at 9.35pm about the lost-and-found saga, complete with a photo of father-daughter duo, tugged at the heartstrings of many.