Following a furore over pee-gate incident in which a drunk passenger onboard an Air India flight urinated on a woman in her 70s, the airline managed by TATA has issued show cause notice to four cabin crew and one pilot. All those involved been de-rostered pending investigation, said Campbell Wilson, CEO and Managing Director of Air India in an official statement on Saturday.
“Four cabin crew and one pilot have been issued show cause notices and de-rostered pending investigation. Internal investigations into whether there were lapses by other staff are ongoing on aspects including the service of alcohol on flight, incident handling, complaint registration on board and grievance handling,” read the statement.
On November 26, a man in an inebriated state urinated on an elderly co-passenger onboard New York- Delhi flight.
In her complaint, the woman said that crew members did not come to her rescue when she was going through this harrowing experience. They refused to allocate another seat after the incident and instead asked her to sit on the soiled seat, which was “reeking of urine”.
“Air India is deeply concerned about the in-flight instances where customers have suffered due to the condemnable acts of their co-passengers on our aircraft. We regret and are pained about these experiences. Air India acknowledges that it could have handled these matters better, both in the air and on the ground and is committed to taking action,” read the statement.
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.”
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.
Meanwhile, the accused Shankar Mishra has been finally arrested by the Delhi Police. Following days of manhunt, the police nabbed the disgraced corporation executive from Bengaluru last night and brought him to the national capital. Mishra will be produced before a court in Delhi on Saturday.
Mishra was booked under sections 354 (molestation), 354 (A), 509 (insulting a woman’s modesty), 510 (misconduct in public by a drunken person), 294 (using obscene words) of the IPC and section 23 of the Aircraft Act for peeing on the woman in the business class of Air India flight on November 26 last year.
Police had issued a lookout circular (LOC) against the accused so that he could not fly out of the country.
He was an employee of American financial services company Wells Fargo. The company him on January 6, calling the allegations against him “deeply disturbing”.