RAWALPINDI: An expatriate fell victim to theft this Thursday, after he landed at Benazir Bhutto International Airport (BBIA).

Tahir Maqbool Naqash, an engineer from Abu Dhabi, arrived in Islamabad on a private airliner. He did not realise what had happened until sehri, after he had reached his home in Muzaffarabad, when he found that his tablet PC had been stolen from his suitcase.

“The packing was torn from one side and the gadget taken out,” he said, and added, “It couldn’t be done somewhere other than either during the offloading of luggage or in the departure lounge.”

The incident highlights a practice which is not uncommon at the airport. However, concerned officials have failed to initiate serious measures to arrest such elements, if there are any.

“I don’t agree that such thefts are the acts of a single individual. This is a mafia enjoying the endorsement of those at the helm at the airport,” Naqash said.

He said he had been trying to reach the airport manager on the phone all day to lodge a complaint but to no avail.

On March 18, Mohammad Rashid, another AJK resident who had flown into Islamabad from Kuala Lumpur, lost his laptop in a similar incident of theft at BBIA.

He spotted the missing item instantly, and raised an alarm, but was unable to retrieve the stolen gadget.

An FIA official based at the Islamabad airport, who asked to remain anonymous, told Dawn that such thefts are a normal occurrence at the airport.

“Ever since I have been posted here, I have come across such complaints daily. But I have never seen any aggrieved passenger getting back his valuables,” he said. Recently, an expatriate family from Oslo was robbed of a purse containing foreign currency equivalent to Rs80,000 as well as gold and credit cards.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2014