Delhi Police has registered an FIR against the unruly passenger who urinated on a fellow elderly woman passenger in the business class of a New York-Delhi flight on November 26.
The accused, Shankar Mishra, has been booked under sections 354 (molestation), 354 (A), 509 (insulting a woman’s modesty), 510 (misconduct in public by a drunken person), 294 (obscene words) of the IPC and section 23 of the Aircraft Act at IGI Airport police station.
Police have issued a lookout circular (LOC) against the accused so that he could not fly out of the country.
In her complaint, the woman said that crew members refused to allocate another seat after the incident and instead asked her to sit on the soiled seat, which was “reeking of urine”.
Narrating her ordeal, the complainant said, “Shortly after lunch was served and the lights were switched off, a male business class passenger seated in 8A walked to my seat, completely inebriated. He unzipped his pants, urinated on me, and kept standing there until the person sitting next to me tapped him and told him to go back to his seat, at which point he staggered back to his seat.”
“I immediately got up to notify the stewardess of what had happened. My clothes, shoes and bag were soaked in urine. The bag contained my passport, travel documents and currency. The flight staff refused to touch them, sprayed my bag and shoes with disinfectant, and took me to the bathroom and gave me a set of airline pyjamas and socks,” she alleged.
Demanding immediate arrest of the accused, she said, “I asked the staff for a change of seat, but was told that no other seats were available. However, another business class passenger who had witnessed my plight and was advocating for me pointed out that there were seats available in first class. The flight crew told me that the pilot had vetoed giving me a seat in first class.”
Calling the conduct of crew members “deeply unprofessional”, she said that she was made to negotiate and confront the perpetrator.
“Not only was the Air India crew deeply unprofessional, but there are also a number of failures worth pointing out. First, the crew did not show good judgment about how much alcohol to serve a passenger. Second, the crew was not proactive in managing a very sensitive and traumatic situation and I had to advocate for myself throughout, waiting for long periods of time to get a response,” she alleged.
India’s air regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued a notice to Tata Group’s Air India, asking why action should not be taken against some officials for dereliction of duty during the incident.
As per the DGCA, prima facie, it emerged that provisions related to handling the Mumbai resident were not complied with.
The airline has announced a 30-day travel ban on the man and constituted an internal investigation to find whether there were lapses in handling the situation by the crew.
According to reports, the accused is the vice president of the Indian unit of a US-based multinational financial services company.
Delhi Police has formed several teams to arrest him, but he is still at large.