Travel Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for road warriors and seasoned travelers. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
In some countries, there is the risk that people add illegal drugs to your luggage in an unobserved moment.
One way to prevent that is to use lockable suitcases so that you at least have a proof when your suitcase was opened forcefully.
Normally, I travel with a backpack that has many zippers and I can't lock all of them. When traveling to India, is there any need to use a lockable suitcase instead of my backpack?
I used to tie the zips of my backpack together with my hair, thinking that if notice the loose hair being broken my luggage would have been tampered with. On one occasion the hair, binding one zipper was broken, so I went to customs to express that I suspect somebody went through my stuff. There was nothing wrong with my luggage, but the custom officer also told me that in case something was found in my luggage, I would still be a prime suspect even after I reported it. So having a lock might not be waterproof against tampering.
The answer by a very knowledgeable travel.se contributor might provide a better alternative then a locked suitcase, that is wrap it.
I've been to India several times. There are some dangers associated with it (as there are with any places on earth). That being said India (at least the parts I've traveled in) seem fairly safe. I'd only feel uncomfortable if I were a woman traveling by myself (I can elaborate on that if you wish). Other than that the biggest problem one typically faces there is people trying to scam you. I have never heard of people doing what you're afraid of. I'm not saying that doesn't happen (I'm sure sometimes it does), just that I think it is a rather low probability. If you really worry about it try to do some research and get more secure luggage, but I really don't think you should worry about this in India. An issue you might face is how can you have "secure luggage" that customs can also easily open up (some such luggage is made with easy open security keys, but that makes me wonder how secure it really is- anyone wanting to open it could hypothetically get such security keys).
