Paralympic Medalist Strip-Searched at Airports, Asked to Remove Prosthetic Leg
Ryan Boyd September 02, 2016
Aditya Mehta, a two-time para-cycling silver medalist at the 2013 Asian Paralympics, was strip-searched twice within a few days at Indira Gandhi International Airport (DEL) and Bengaluru International Airport (BLR). Airport security at New Delhi demanded that Mehta take off his clothes and prosthetic leg just days after security at Bengaluru Airport told him to place his belongings, including his prosthetic leg, through the airport scanner.
Mehta took the airports to task in a Facebook post, where he vented his frustration at the treatment of the disabled by airport security.
“There cannot be a worse treatment than this for an amputee. On one hand we are trying our best to make lives better for the amputees at Central Armed Forces and on other side there are these uncivil officers who try to put us down. It was really humiliating for me to receive such immoral treatment. I was asked to take off my prosthetic limb and was almost stripped off.”
To read more on this story, go to FirstPost.
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Only in India, they have some really dumb security personnel.
Verifying a prosthetic limb is not unreasonable. It is the appropriate and prudent thing to do. India has been subject to terror events both actual and apprehended. Unfortunately, terrorists will use all manner of items to get a bomb through. As we know, even children are used as suicide bombers. I appreciate that the gentleman was important, but he is no different than the rest of us, and just as I am subject to search so too was he. Lest anyone forget, the PM of India was murdered by members of her own security detail, so nothing is to be ignored now when it comes to security measures. Indians are a very modest people and I sincerely doubt that he was anywhere near strip searched. At most he was probably asked to remove his outer garments.There would have had to been a legitimate reason and based upon the melodramatic description he has provided, I can see why security might be suspicious.