Polytechnic student Chelsey Chow, 19, was in a state of panic after discovering that she had left her laptop on a bus on Monday.

The laptop contained her work for four presentations and five projects.

Thanks to bus driver Ramasamy Krishnan, 52, she got the laptop back. He even had to stop a stranger from making off with it.

A grateful Ms Chow wrote about the incident on her Facebook page on Tuesday. The post has since gone viral, with more than 2,660 shares as of 3.45pm yesterday.

Mr Ramasamy has also received more than 10 Facebook messages from people praising him, including one from Malaysia.

A bus driver of nearly seven years, he recounted yesterday how he managed to stop a man from taking the laptop that Ms Chow had left behind on his bus.

On Monday evening, Mr Ramasamy was driving bus service 61 from Bukit Batok to Eunos when he spotted a passenger behaving suspiciously on the near-empty bus. He saw the passenger walk from the back of the bus and pick up something from a seat farther away.

"I thought maybe it could have been a valuable thing that somebody left behind," he said yesterday.

Mr Ramasamy told the man that he could not take something that was not his. When the man appeared reluctant to hand over the laptop, Mr Ramasamy hinted that it could become a police case.

Meanwhile, Ms Chow realised that her laptop was missing and rushed to Eunos Interchange in search of it. Mr Ramasamy spotted her and returned the laptop after verifying that it was hers.

In the Facebook post, Ms Chow said: "I want to thank Mr Ramasamy for his alertness that was beyond the call of duty. Through the mere 10 minutes of interaction with him, (I could tell that) his heart to serve was apparent."

Mr Ramasamy, who recognised Ms Chow as a regular on his route, said: "When I'm driving the bus, I like everything to be perfect. I care about my passengers and I care about my bus."

Mr Patrick Nathan, vice-president of corporate information and communications at SMRT, hopes Mr Ramasamy's actions will "inspire his colleagues to look out for their passengers as they would for their own family and friends".

Dominic Teo