Stripped, no restroom break: Indian woman narrates 8-hour detention ordeal at US airport

Indian entrepreneur Shruti Chaturvedi has alleged that she was detained for eight hours at Anchorage Airport in Alaska, where she was stripped of her warm clothes, denied access to a phone call, and physically searched by a male Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officer—reportedly over a power bank found in her handbag.

Chaturvedi, the founder of Indian Action Project and Chaaipani, took to social media platform X to share her ordeal. She claimed the situation escalated after airport security deemed the power bank in her handbag “suspicious.”

In a now-viral post, she wrote: “Imagine being detained by Police and FBI for 8 hours, being questioned the most ridiculous things, physically checked by a male officer on camera, stripped off warm wear, mobile phone, wallet, kept in chilled room, not allowed to use a restroom, or make a single phone call, made to miss your flight - all because the airport security found your powerbank in handbag ‘suspicious.’”