Almost two months have passed since Gargi Dutt, a professor in Bijoygarh Jyotishroy College, returned from the US by a Lufthansa flight and found her registered baggage missing, but she is yet to receive either any of her belongings or any compensation.

“I had travelled by Lufthansa with my husband Pururaj and younger daughter Jija to the US, but the trip turned into a nightmare when Jija and I landed in Calcutta late on June 3 and I found my luggage missing,” said Gargi. “I suspect one of the loaders had stolen my luggage,” she added.

And Gargi is just one of the many air passengers who have made similar complaints about lost or tampered with baggage (see box).

“My faith in Calcutta airport officials and Lufthansa representatives here is shaken. I have been running from pillar to post for the past month without receiving any cooperation or assurance about my luggage,” she added.

“A police case has been registered and we are looking into the matter,” a Lufthansa official said.

Written complaints to the Calcutta airport authorities and airport police station on the date of the incident, as well as frantic efforts to contact Lufthansa representatives in Calcutta and Delhi yielded nothing, prompting Dutt to shoot off an email to Lufthansa’s office in Frankfurt.

“Lufthansa’s representatives here are sub-agents and gave vague answers, while Prashant Mohan, the station manager of Lufthansa at the Calcutta airport, refused to communicate with me,” Gargi claimed. “I came to know that Mohan had left orders that his cellphone number should not be given to me and that he said I wouldn’t get my luggage back.”

Lufthansa’s Frankfurt office told Dutt that her luggage had been loaded on the same flight she took to Calcutta, and that efforts to trace it would continue for three months. Apart from that, she will receive compensation of about Rs 61,000 from Lufthansa.

“But how can anyone return the priceless things I have lost?” rued Dutt at her Hazra Road home.