An Indian woman was allegedly forced to remove her clothes as part of 'random security checks' while she was on her way to Iceland via Germany with her family.
The 30-year-old, an Indian passport holder, was travelling with her Icelandic husband and daughter (4) when the incident happened.
According to a report in NDTV, the 30-year-old woman was allowed to leave only after her Icelandic husband walked into the room at her insistence.
“At the airport, Ms Basappa had stood her ground, refusing to pull up her dress and demanded that her husband be called in. She says the tone and tenor of the officers changed after they saw her Icelandic husband. The strip search quickly turned into a pat down, something she was willing to do much before the whole nightmare,” said the NDTV report.
"Are brown people not suspicious if we have European partners or co-travellers?" she wrote in an angry post on Facebook, describing her incident of March 29.
"I would like to know if it is a regular protocol to ask passengers to remove their clothing, be it their underwear, as part of 'random security checks'."
Shruthi Basapa had undergone an abdominal surgery two weeks ago. Shruthi passed the full body scan, yet she was willing to go through a pat-down check. She requested them to be gentle since she had had a surgery. Even though she provided medical reports of her recent surgery, they refused to let her go.
"We were travelling to Iceland from India via Frankfurt with our 4-year-old daughter when I was asked to move aside for this 'random check', no explanations offered. I was taken into a room and was asked to lift my dress/ take it off so that I could be checked to make sure I wasn't 'carrying anything under my clothes'", she wrote in her Facebook post.
Shruthi alleges it was a case of racial profiling.
This is not the first time something like this happened with her. But the treatment meted out to her this time was shockingly unbearable.
Reacting to Shruthi's Facebook post, the Facebook account of Frankfurt airport said that such a practice wasn't part of the standard protocol, according to an NDTV report.
"I am shocked to hear that. Of course it is not the standard protocol reserved for anyone. We would appreciate your detailed feedback. What happened exactly? When and where was it?" the Frankfurt Airport Team asked.
"I hate to play the race card here, but I was the only person pulled aside and peeking at my husband instantly changed the woman's mind about the strip search that was now a regular pat-down. I'd appreciate a response from you at the earliest," she wrote on Facebook.
Raveesh - Plz send me a report on this. @CGIFrankfurt https://t.co/Aa2iljmsIG
— Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) April 1, 2017
As claimed by the woman in a Facebook Post, she was travelling to Iceland from India, via Frankfurt when she was asked to move aside for the 'random check' and with no other explanations offered.
“I was taken into a room, and was asked to lift my dress/take it off so that I could be checked to make sure I wasn't 'carrying anything under my clothes'. This whole ordeal happened in front of my four-year-old,” the woman said in the post.
She said, “I was given no explanation as to why I was put through this ordeal. My constant requests to be patted down gently because of a recent abdominal surgery (proof of which I was carrying on hand) was constantly ignored and resulted in being shouted at aggressively by the woman in charge. She then proceeded to call her supervisor who parroted the same lines about how they wanted me to take my dress off.”
The woman was the only person pulled aside for the strip search, she adds alleging it to be a case of racial profiling.
