Passenger loses laptop worth Rs 2 lakh on train, contract worker helps return

Chennai: In an act of integrity and honesty, R Sribalu, a contractual supervisor who handled rodent control measures on Southern Railway passenger trains returned an expensive laptop that he found lying below a train seat.

The incident took place over the weekend when the train was in the yard near the Egmore Railway Station in Chennai. The laptop, a high-end Apple MacBook costs about Rs 2 lakh which is almost the annual income of the contractual supervisor who found it and facilitated its return.

Senthilkumar, an iOS developer at a leading Indian tech company was traveling from his native to Chennai by train, when he mistakenly carried another passenger’s bag, while alighting at the destination. On realizing his folly, almost an hour after getting off the train, he managed to ring up the owner of the bag and managed to return it within a few hours. However, when asked about his own bag which was left back on the train, the other passenger said he hadn’t noticed it.

Much was at stake, because the young techie had lost his company-issued laptop. After filing his complaint at the railway station in Chennai, he hoped for some good news, but got none. It was later in the evening that he received a call that got him elated.

His laptop and charger were found, thanks to R Sribalu. He had found the laptop and charger underneath the lower berth in the train compartment, as he went about his work. He then notified the railway authorities, who notified the passenger, based on his complaint.

“We carry out rodent control measures and it’s extremely rare to find such valuable goods lying in the empty compartment. At first sight, I knew it was an Apple laptop and that it would’ve cost over a lakh rupees. I felt sad that someone had lost something so expensive and that it must be returned to the rightful owner without delay,” Sribalu told Zee Media.

The 33-year old is the lone breadwinner of his four-member family. When asked about his educational qualification, he said he had studied up to 10th grade.

The official Twitter handle of Divisional Railway Manager, Chennai, Southern Railway had also tweeted about this incident and shared a picture o the laptop being handed over to the passenger, in the presence of officials.

“It was entirely my fault that I negligently picked up a similar-looking bag, belonging to another passenger. I was carrying a company-issued laptop with important data and the consequences of losing it would have been quite serious,” Senthilkumar told Zee Media.