A 30-year-old Indian woman was asked to remove her clothes at Germany’s Frankfurt airport by security officials this week. Expressing angst over her ordeal in a facebook post, Shruthi Basappa said,”I was asked to remove the dress I was wearing. Yes. Remove my clothes. Is this the new norm? Isn’t it enough to always be the one random person picked out of line that now I need to wrap my head around the fact that I might be asked to strip?”
Describing the whole experience as violating, She also said that her constant request to be patted down (special security check) gently because of a recent abdominal surgery was constantly ignored. She also carried medical proof to back her request but they chose not to consider it. 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 4 year old. I was given no explanation as to why I was put through this ordeal.
She was allowed to go only after her husband who is an icelandic walked into the room and intervened.
Basappa, who was travelling from Bengaluru to Iceland said the behavior of the officers drastically changed after they saw her Icelandic husband. The strip search quickly turned into a pat down, which she herself was willing to do.
