CISF refutes allegation of stripping woman at KIA

Allegations that the woman was made to take her shirt off at the airport, turned out to be false

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: A woman's allegations on social media that she was asked to remove her shirt and stand wearing a camisole during a security check at the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA), have turned out to be false, reports said on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the woman who identified herself as a student and musician on the social media platform Twitter alleged, “I was asked to remove my shirt at the Bengaluru Airport during a security check. It was really humiliating to stand there at the security checkpoint wearing just a camisole and getting the kind of attention you'd never want as a woman. @BLRAirport Why do you need a woman to strip?”, the tweet read.

The Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL), which has jurisdiction over the KIA airport, took note of the matter and said that the issue has been “highlighted to the operations team.”

BIAL replied to the tweet saying: "Hello @KrishaniGadhvi, we deeply regret the hassle caused and this should not have happened. We have highlighted this to our operations team and also escalated it to the security team managed by CISF (Central Industrial Security force), a Government sovereign."

As the tweet began to gain interest on the social media platform, the woman deleted the tweet and then deactivated her Twitter account. On the other hand, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which takes care of the security and passenger screening at the airport, has denied the allegations.

It has said that action will be taken against the passenger who was traveling from Bengaluru to Ahmedabad on an IndiGo flight for making false accusations. The CISF has claimed that the woman was wearing a denim jacket with badges and beading and was frisked behind curtains while her female friend put it into the scanner.

While the CISF staff asked her to remain inside while the jacket was being returned, the passenger reportedly said that she would be comfortable stepping out. The CISF has said that the passenger was seemingly unhappy when the security personnel asked her to take off her coat.

Female CISF officer assaulted

The incident occurred only a day after a passenger was booked for assaulting a female CISF officer at the Bengaluru airport. According to the CISF, the matter took place on December 25.

Jockey Ammanur Khasim, the accused, who was traveling from Bengaluru to Kochi, allegedly abused and assaulted the CISF officer during the verification of documents. He was allegedly in an inebriated state and had informed the officer about losing his green card.

When Dhaneshwari Kuttam, who was conducting the security checks, asked the accused to file a complaint and provided him with forms to fill up, he threw the papers back at her. He also assaulted and verbally abused the CISF officer.