Mangaluru: Honest auto driver Pratap Shetty returns gold worth Rs 5 lakh

Managluru, Aug 26: A 35-year-old autorickshaw driver was rewarded by the Mangaluru City Police on Saturday for returning a bag of gold jewellery that a woman had accidentally left behind in his vehicle.

Deepti, wife of Prashant, a software engineer in Bengaluru came to Mangaluru this morning. After alighting at KSRTC bus stand, she hired an auto-rickshaw and travelled to Kulai neighbourhood to attend a wedding ceremony.

Deepti had kept one of her bags in the space behind the auto's seat. It contained gold ornaments worth Rs 5 lakh. While alighting, she forgot about the bag and the auto left.

Later, the passenger realised her folly and started to weep. She lost all hope of recovering the money as he hadn't noted the vehicle number.

But she was in for a surprise. She received a call from a police officer after couple of hours. The caller asked her to collect her bag from the officer of Mangaluru City Police Commissioner.

In fact the auto-rickshaw driver, Pratap Shetty, had noticed the abandoned bag of valuables after returning from Kulai and handed it over to Mangaluru North Police Station. He is the son of Jayaram Shetty, a resident of Jeppu Kudupady in Mangaluru.

The Police Commissioner M Chandra Sekhar invited Mr Shetty to his office and gifted him Rs 5,000 with an appreciation.

"We decided to reward this honest man so that it serves as an incentive to other auto drivers to return baggage forgotten by their passengers," said a senior cop.