Gold ‘bomb’ creates panic at Chennai airport
All that glitters is not gold. Similarly, all unclaimed baggage is not bomb, Chennai airport authorities discovered on Tuesday, but not before a box lying for more than an hour at the car park near the domestic terminal created panic.
P. Lazar, a head constable, noticed the box and alerted the airport manager, who, in turn, called the bomb squad. The manager also spread information about the unclaimed baggage through the public announcement system at the airport.
Police soon cordoned off the area and the bomb squad arrived with sniffer dogs. It examined the box and declared to the relief of everyone that there were no explosives in it.
When the box was later opened at the office of the airport manager, the glitter in it surprised all present. It contained 55 sovereigns of gold ornaments. “We could not believe a passenger could be so careless,” said a police source.
By then, Dennis Muthiah, 35, and Claudius Mary, 34, had rushed to the airport looking for missed baggage. After verification, the airport manager handed over the box to the software engineers working in the US.
The couple had reached the city at 1.30 pm Tuesday by an IndiGo flight from Thiruvananthapuram after visiting native Nagercoil.
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