Coolie finds Rs 1.4 lakh phone of Amitabh Bachchan aide, gives it to cops

Coolie finds Rs 1.4 lakh phone of Amitabh Bachchan aide, gives it to cops

MUMBAI: Dashrath Daund earns not more than Rs 300 a day at Dadar station where he has worked for a coolie for close to three decades. Yet on Monday, when he noticed a high-end phone accidentally left behind in the seating area of the station, Daund, 62, was not tempted to keep it with him even for a little while. The coolie immediately turned in the phone at the Government Railway Police (GRP) chowky, a move that was commended by the police and earned him a reward from the owner of the handset.

Police officials later found that the handset, worth Rs 1.4 lakh, belonged to Deepak Sawant, the trusted make-up artist of actor Amitabh Bachchan. The Sawant family has offered a cash reward of Rs 1,000 to Daund for his honesty.

On Monday, Daund was at work, carrying passengers’ luggage into long-distance trains. Around 11. 40pm, he had wrapped up work on platform number 4 of Dadar where a train was heading to Amritsar. “I was walking on the platform when I noticed a phone lying in a seating area. I picked it up and asked the passengers seated nearby whether it belonged to them. They all said it did not,” said Daund.

The coolie then went straight to the Dadar GRP chowky. “I’m not well-versed with gadgets and never keep anyone else’s belongings with me anyway,” he said. After depositing the phone with the cops, Daund went off to sleep. Sometime later, the cops called him up. They had tracked down the owner of the handset.

The police department and the Sawants were full of praise for the elderly coolie.