Daijiworld Media Network – Udupi (SP)
Udupi, Apr 10: A tourist car driver from Mudarangady has returned the suitcase that had gone missing mysteriously after falling from the carrier atop a moving Tata Sumo vehicle. In a heartwarming gesture, the honest driver not only saved the suitcase, which contained gold, from being stolen, he even took care to safeguard and return it with all contents intact.
The suitcase had made a sound when it fell down from the vehicle opposite Goddess Mahalakshmi Temple in Uchchila near Padubidri on April 7, but when the occupants of the vehicle returned to the spot to pick it after taking a U-turn within minutes, it had gone missing.
The personnel of the parked trucks and hotel at the spot had said that a person who came in a motor bike had taken away the suitcase. In a complaint filed in Padubidri police station, Haridas Bhat, who was driving the vehicle, had said that the suitcase contained 25 sovereigns of gold ornaments apart from clothes.
The car driver, who read media reports appearing on Wednesday, contacted Haridas Bhat on cell phone number mentioned therein, and handed over the suitcase by going to his home. He told Bhat that he was riding his motor bike behind a Tata Sumo vehicle on Monday night to witness a Bhoota Kola programme, when he saw the abandoned suitcase by the roadside. He picked up the suitcase, and waited in Uchchila for over half an hour, for the concerned to come back searching for it and claim the baggage. Haridas Bhat had failed to see this driver with suitcase in hand waiting at Uchchila, and therefore, had returned home after filing police complaint.
The driver, who failed in his effort to trace the owner, had returned home later, thinking that those who had lost the suitcase might publish their identity through media reports the next day.
Bhat, who operates J N Travels in Pangala, said that the driver of the tourist car mentioned above, who expressed the desire to remain anonymous, was rewarded suitably for the exemplary honesty displayed by him. The ornaments belonged to Bhat’s daughter-in-law, Haripriya, and her mother, Ratna Venugopal, he added.