An IndiGo Airlines (6E) flight attendant is in hot water after a gold necklace disappeared from a five-year-old passenger on Flight 6E661 from Thiruvananthapuram (TRV) to Bangalore (BLR).
This happened on April 1, when flight attendant Aditi Ashwini Sharma allegedly took charge of the child during an in-flight commotion, handing her over without the 20-gram gold necklace.
The complaint was laid by Priyanka Mukherjee, who had boarded a plane with her daughters, aged five and two years. She said the children started fighting soon after takeoff, and cabin crew member Aditi Ashwini Sharma stepped in to help.
The flight attendant advised looking after the elder daughter while Mukherjee took care of her younger child.
When the plane landed at Bangalore (BLR), the flight attendant brought the child back to her mother.
Mukherjee then realized that her daughter's gold chain, which weighed around 20 grams and was worth about $30,000, had been stolen. Sharma allegedly denied the theft when questioned about it.
Investigation challenges and response
The probe is heavily hindered because there is no in-flight camera footage. Once the plane landed in Bangalore, Mukherjee reported the case to several authorities, such as the Central Industrial Security Force.
According to the IndiGo Airlines administration, the police officials, "Right from when we landed in Bengaluru until afternoon, I didn't receive a satisfactory reply from anyone," Mukherjee said in an interview with the Times of India. "The airport officials told me that as the incident took place onboard the flight, I would have to handle the airline and the police."
Police have filed a case and started investigating the incident, but no arrests have been made. When officials tried to interrogate the flight attendant, airline officials allegedly informed them that Sharma had denied the charges and asserted that there was no CCTV footage to confirm the incident.
IndiGo's official statement
Following the serious allegations, IndiGo Airlines has released an official statement:
"We are aware of an incident recently where a staff member on flight 6E 661 from Thiruvananthapuram to Bengaluru was involved in a matter where a concern was raised by our customer. We take such issues very seriously and are offering full cooperation and support to the concerned authorities in conducting the investigations."
The Gurugram-headquartered airline operates India's largest passenger airline with a 59.2% market share as of 2023. The company has not confirmed if the accused flight attendant is on active duty during the probe.
Similar incidents
A 37-year-old Egyptian Emirates Airlines (EK) flight attendant is facing charges of theft after he allegedly swiped around $7,656 from business class passengers flying from Thailand to Dubai (DXB).
The incident happened in June 2018 when three brothers briefly vacated their seats to help their sick father, only to find cash stolen from their wallets, court records accessed by Gulf News reported.
The three brothers told how the theft was made when they left their luggage momentarily unattended in their business class seats. They found upon returning that some 3,700 Emirati dirhams ($1,531) and 14,800 dirhams ($6,125) in a total of US dollars and local currency had been stolen from their wallets.
My brothers and I went to visit my father," one brother swore to prosecutors. "When we got back to our seats, I found that Dh 3700 had gone missing from my wallet. My brothers also found that Dh 14,800 in dollars and dirhams had gone missing from their wallets.
The brothers quickly informed the cabin supervisor, who recorded the event, taking photographs of the leftover banknotes, which were sequentially numbered to the money that had been stolen. This fact was valuable evidence for the follow-up investigation.
Upon arrival in Dubai, police seized the luggage of passengers for fingerprint examination and searched the plane extensively. Although the money that had been stolen was not found, forensic evidence reportedly traced the crime back to one particular crew member.
The 37-year-old Egyptian flight attendant was identified when police matched his fingerprints to those found on one of the victims' wallets. He appeared in Dubai court on Wednesday, where he pleaded not guilty to the theft charges.