- Meryl Sebastian
- BBC News-Delhi
Shankar Mishra issued a statement through his lawyer saying that he would cooperate with the investigation
The head of the Indian company “Tata Suns” expressed his “sorrow” after allegations that a drunk man urinated on an elderly woman on board her flight.
The accident occurred at the end of November, on board an Air India plane operated by Tata Suns.
The news sparked widespread outrage in India, and criticism over how the company handled the incident.
The man was arrested on Saturday. And he was fired from his job at the American company “Wells Fargo”.
The chairman of Tata Suns, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, issued a statement on Sunday saying the airline should have been “faster” in its response to the incident.
He added, “We will review and reform every procedure to prevent incidents of an unruly nature and deal with them if they occur.”
The statement comes a day after Air India’s chief executive, Campbell Wilson, expressed “regret” and “pain” for what customers have been experiencing as a result of the “condemned acts of passengers”.
The accident occurred on November 26, in the business class cabin of a flight from New York to New Delhi.
It was alleged that the suspect, Shankar Mishra, was intoxicated and urinated on one of the female passengers, a 72-year-old woman.
“My clothes, shoes and wallet were completely soaked in urine,” the woman wrote in a letter to the head of Tata Suns the next day.
She said that she asked the flight crew to change her seat, but the response was that there was no vacancy, and she was offered a small seat for the staff to use. She claimed that the flight crew brought the man to her – against her wishes – to apologize to her.
The woman described the trip as “traumatic”. She said the airline had only issued a partial refund for her airfare.
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Mishra when arrested by the police
An American doctor, Shugata Bhattacharjee, who was seated next to Shankar Mishra on the plane, backed up the woman’s statement.
The doctor told NDTV that he had sent a written complaint to the airline on the day of the accident, but it “came to nothing”.
The airline has asked an internal committee to investigate the complaint against Mishra.
Two weeks later, the company imposed a 30-day travel ban on Mishra – the duration of the ban being among the factors that sparked outrage once word got out.
At the request of the woman’s family, the company finally filed a complaint with the police about the incident on December 28.
A week later, it submitted a report to India’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
Last week, the authority issued notes to officials and flight crew, saying they had not complied with its rules on dealing with a rowdy passenger on board. She also said the crew’s behavior was “unprofessional”.
The airline then removed the pilot and four crew members from the flight crew list.
The airline’s chief executive, Campbell Wilson, promised to put in place a strict reporting system for disruptive behavior on Air India.
Wells Fargo issued a statement Friday saying it had terminated Shankar Mishra’s contract, and that “he was cooperating with law enforcement authorities.”
Mishra was arrested on Saturday in Bengaluru and charged with charges including sexual harassment and misconduct.
Before his arrest, Mishra issued a statement through his lawyer, in which he said that he had washed the woman’s purse and clothes, two days after the incident.
His statement read: “The lady’s ongoing complaint was only in relation to the appropriate compensation paid by the airline, and she had filed a subsequent complaint for that on December 20, 2022.”
He added, “The data recorded by the flight crew before the investigation committee shows that there is no eyewitness to the accident.
He emphasized that “the accused has full confidence in the country’s judicial system, and will cooperate with the investigation procedures.”