Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL), that operates Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, has denied scanning the passport of an infant at their Duty-Free counter earlier this month. Raising privacy concerns, the parents of the infant have alleged that their child’s passport was also scanned along with theirs when they made a purchase at the airport’s Duty-Free counter.
The couple, Pooja Tomar and her husband Ankit Sikarwar, along with their two children aged 3 years and ten months, had landed at the IGI Airport on August 30, from the US, via Doha.
Upon their return, the couple alleged, as they headed to the Duty-Free area to make some purchase, upon billing both their passports were scanned. In a video, on September 11, Pooja Tomar,
from her Instagram account ‘pooja_umreeka’, said that after crossing immigration when they went to the Duty-Free area they were asked to show all four passports, including that of their toddler and infant.
Pooja said, when they objected to their children’s passports being scanned, they were told this is being done to find them better purchase offers.
Later, when she alleged this practice as a “scam” raising privacy concerns for her children, Pooja said the airport operator responded to her in an email.
Pooja told News18 that in that email DIAL first asked her to share relevant details and then returned informing her, “As we were running many promotional offers, cashier requested the passports to check whether any of our in-store multi-buy offers could benefit your family. Our billing process has stringent IT controls that check passport eligibility and prevent an ineligible passport from being used for a purchase.”
DIAL further clarified, “Our review confirms that the purchase proceeded against the two adult passports and did not process any of the other passports. No infant passport details were captured in the completed transaction and they were returned to you.”
To this email, Pooja responded saying that they did not give prior consent for their passports to be scanned for promotional eligibility checks.
She also asked DIAL to clarify on how many passports were actually scanned during their visit, whether any information from those passports, particularly our infant’s passport, was temporarily captured, where it was stored, for how long, and whether any third-party system or database accessed any of this data.
According to Pooja, the airport responded saying, “Your passport and Mr Sikarwar’s passports were scanned, followed by the passport of one infant. The infant’s passport was not accepted by the point-of-sale system. The fourth passport was not scanned, and all passports were returned.”
The response further mentioned, “the transaction was against only two adult passports as per the invoice details…Our review of the relevant system records confirms that the infant’s passport details were not retained as part of the transaction. Accordingly, no infant passport data relating to this transaction is available in our systems for deletion.”
However, when News18 reached out to DIAL, seeking a response on the incident, it said, at no stage was the infant’s passport used, nor was any infant-related data captured in our systems.
“Following a detailed review of the matter, we have reconfirmed that only the accompanying adults’ passports were used for the transaction in question. At no stage was the infant’s passport used, nor was any infant-related data captured in our systems. Our review has also reconfirmed no evidence of any misuse of passport information,” DIAL said in its response.
The customer has been contacted directly by our CRM team, and the relevant clarifications have been shared, it said.
Delhi Duty Free operates in compliance with applicable regulatory requirements, which in turn requires passenger passport details to be verified and recorded during eligible transactions. Any information collected as part of this process is handled in accordance with applicable data protection requirements and maintained under strict security controls, the airport operator told News18.
/images/ppid_59c68470-image-178996268657017165.webp)
/images/ppid_59c68470-image-178971252552332028.webp)
