Passenger Asked to Remove Prosthetic Leg During Security Screening

In India, a disabled passenger faced a harrowing incident late last month when security officials forced her to strip and remove her prosthetic leg before finally letting her board.

A passenger at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (BOM) was reduced to tears after security officials forced her to remove her prosthetic leg before at last allowing her to board her flight.

Mumbai-based Antara Telang was due to fly out of BOM on a Bangalore-bound flight on the morning of Jan. 30. Speaking to Buzzfeed, Telang explained how, upon reaching the security checkpoint, she was asked to remove her prosthetic. She asked officials if they could scan her with an explosives trace detector (ETD) instead, but staff refused.

“I frequent Delhi and Bangalore airports. I have never been asked to take off my leg there – they use a hand held ETD machine as well as doing pat down checks. Similarly, I have visited airports in the capital cities of Paris, Madrid, Budapest etc, where I was never asked to take it off,” Telang said.

Telang, a director at a Mumbai-based company, spent 40 minutes pleading with officials, but, “had no choice but to go to the ‘private room’ they directed me to, take off my jeans completely, and take off my leg.”

Additionally, Telang explained, the layout of this private room, in which the chairs were arranged across from the door, meant that she had to hop across the space in order to give officials her prosthetic for scanning.

“I literally had to hop on one leg holding my 6 kg [13.2 lbs] prosthetic in my hand to give it to them…Finally it was given to me and I was allowed to board my flight after the 45 minute ordeal,” she said.

Telang said that while she has had similar previous experiences at BOM, after this latest incident, she said she was, “actually crying by the time I took my boarding pass from them.”

In response, the airport explained that all prosthetics must be scanned before boarding. Additionally, India’s Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), the agency responsible for the security of the country’s airports, told India Times that, “We cannot risk other passengers’ safety for one passenger. We followed the government’s protocols.”

[Photo: Antara Telang]