Antara Telang’s experience with the security officials at Mumbai airport’s domestic terminal will leave you shocked. The young entrepreneur shares details of a humiliating incident, where she was asked to ‘take off’ her prosthetic leg, and run it through the scanner with other bags, for security reasons, in this video.
Antara might have recovered from a near fatal accident that claimed her right leg, back in 2010. But the indignity inflicted upon her by the Mumbai airport authority has left her with a bigger scar to live with. After an overgrown tree collapsed on Antara, a resident of Sion, her leg had to be amputated. The gutsy St Xavier graduate didn’t lose her positivity and grit. But Mumbai airport’s security personnel brought her to tears, and this is not the first time. She was asked to ‘remove’ her prosthetic leg and pass it through the luggage scanner, along with the bags of other passengers. She was shocked, hurt and angry at being dealt with, with such insensitivity, over and over again. While usually at other airports, her leg is scanned by a hand held ETD (explosives trace detector), at Mumbai airport’s domestic terminal, security officials insisted that she ‘takes her leg off’.
She also tweeted about this hurtful experience.
Thankfully, she didn’t face the same situation at Bengaluru’s domestic terminal, on her way back.
What’s really surprising is that this is not the first time that Mumbai airport officials have put her through this. She has written letters to the airport’s Public Relations Office in revolt, but these have not been acknowledged. The airport authorities maintain that prosthetic limbs are not exempted from security check. But surely, there are more dignified and sensitive ways of carrying out security checks for the specially abled, something that is indeed done with care at other airports around the world.
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