DGCA to probe IndiGo’s passenger manhandling incident, says Minister

New Delhi : Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju on Wednesday asked the sector regulator to probe the October 15 incident in which an IndiGo airline passenger was manhandled by the carrier’s staff at Delhi airport.

According to Raju, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) will probe the incident and submit a report.

“This type of barbarous things should not be allowed… violence has to be condemned… I have called for a report from the government agencies,” Raju told reporters here.

Additionally, the Bureau for Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) has issued notice to the airline for not informing it about termination of service of employees who had access to airport secured areas, reports IANS.

The current rules mandate the airline to inform the BCAS when any employee is suspended or his services terminated and submit their airport entry passes (AEPs).

The development comes a day after a video showed IndiGo’s passenger Rajiv Katyal being manhandled by the airline’s staff after a verbal altercation.

Details of the incident, which took place on October 15, surfaced only on Tuesday after the video went viral on social media. The video showed Katyal, who arrived from Chennai, waiting for a passenger bus at the airport when the incident took place.

On Wednesday, IndiGo submitted a report on the incident to the Ministry of Civil Aviation. On Tuesday, Union Minister Jayant Sinha had sought a report from the budget carrier regarding the incident.

The airline, in its seven-page report said that its employee Montu Kalra – since sacked by IndiGo – who shot the video about the incident, was indeed the one who “instigated the incident and further provoked the customer by beginning to shoot a video on his mobile phone”. The airline said Kalra was a cargo employee and had no reason to approach the passenger area.

After the video surfaced, social media was abuzz, slamming the airline for terminating the services of Kalra, who was called a “whistleblower”.