A senior Air India pilot from Mumbai was robbed in his hotel room in Chicago, where he had a stopover last week, and was left further traumatised after his repeated pleas for help were ignored by unsympathetic hotel staff.
The incident, which took place on April 15, has prompted the national carrier to review the security at all US hotels where it accommodates its staff. A top Air India official, in fact, is already in US to conduct the audit. Captain Pankul Mathur (pictured right), who flew a Delhi-Chicago flight that day, has said in his complaint that he was robbed of $500 (over Rs 27,000) late at night in room number 1507 of Hotel 71 in downtown Chicago.
He has described the robber as a strongly built “African-American woman”, who frantically knocked on his door shortly before 11 pm, when he was sleeping, before barging in. “I thought it was some kind of emergency and being half asleep, opened the door without peeping through the eyepiece (peephole),” Capt Mathur, who is the joint general manager of operations, stated in his complaint. When he opened the door that had no safety latch, the woman, wearing a black leather jacket and black jeans pushed him aside and rushed inside. “She picked up my wallet lying on the bedside table… took out all the cash and threw the papers from the wallet on the bed,” he said.
25/04/13 Aditya Anand/Mumbai Mirror
