“It’s not just a laptop for me. My future depends on it. It has all my research data collected since the beginning of my research programme,” says Sayoojya CS, a second-year visually-challenged PhD scholar of Calicut University. The 25-year-old researcher lost her laptop in the first week of November, when she and her friends were at the Kozhikode beach.
Someone might have stolen the laptop from their car when Sayoojya and her friends were spending time at the beach that day. “I will be in big trouble if I do not get my laptop back. Apart from the research data collected last year, it also contains books in PDF and scanned format collected since my college days,” she shared.
“Next week, I have a paper presentation. I don’t know how I will do it without the help of my laptop. I’m not able to continue my research without my laptop,” she says. Considering Sayoojya’s situation, her teachers and the All Kerala Research Scholars Association (AKRSA) launched a campaign on social media to find the missing laptop.
Through the campaign, AKRSA requested the person who currently has the laptop to return it to Sayoojya. “We are ready to pay for the laptop if anyone has purchased it from someone. The data stored is more valuable than the price of the laptop,” says Lijin Rajan, joint convener of AKRSA. Sayoojya filed a complaint at the Kozhikode Town police station after she lost her laptop. She said the police had not taken the complaint seriously till they started the social media campaign.
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“I contact the police officers every two days. The officers say it is not easy to find a laptop, like mobile phones. I hope they carry out a serious investigation based on my complaint,” she said. After starting the campaign, many people contacted Sayoojya and her teachers and members of AKRSA are offering a new laptop, but what she wants is her missing laptop which contains her research data. She hopes she will get it back soon.
