Pee-gate: Man who urinated on co-flyer held from Bengaluru guest house

NEW DELHI/BENGALURU: A joint team of Delhi and Bengaluru police tracked down Shankar Mishra to Bengaluru and arrested him a little after midnight on Saturday for allegedly urinating on a 70-year-old co-passenger in business class on an Air India flight from New York to Delhi on November 26. Mishra, according to police, had already been briefed by his lawyers on what to say and do in the event of arrest.
Mishra was apprehended from a guest house in Bengaluru at 12.30am using internet tracking technology and information from sources about a red Jeep Compass SUV. He was brought to Delhi where a court sent him to judicial custody in Tihar jail for 14 days. The flight’s pilots have also been questioned and their statements recorded.

When police knocked on his door in Bengaluru, Mishra, a Wells Fargo executive fired by the company following the incident, pleaded: “I was drunk. I cannot believe what I did in such an inebriated state.” The police team told him he was being arrested for urinating in an inebriated condition on the elderly woman on the flight.

Never acted intentionally, was drunk: Mishra to cops
Mishra, according to the police, told them: “I have not committed any mistake, sir. I was intoxicated when it happened. Also, I am writing down everything in detail, all what happened that day and how I behaved without knowing anything.” He showed police a two-page note that he had written in English and said, “I was writing down the same when you people knocked on the door. Believe me, I am innocent and I never acted intentionally; it was a drunk man’s act.”
He also reportedly said his advocates and legal advisers had spoken to the woman passenger and the issue was being sorted out. When a Delhi cop asked Mishra why he went incommunicado, the latter replied: “I was advised to switch off my mobile phone until I got anticipatory bail.”

While being bundled into the police vehicle, Mishra maintained: “When the flight landed, I returned to normalcy and the crew members told me what had occurred. I did not believe them. A co-passenger affirmed that it was true and that I had behaved very badly. Then the elderly woman came up to me and with tears in her eyes, blamed and cursed me. Only then did I realise what I had done.”
Police said Mishra left his apartment in January 4 and shifted to a guest house in Bengaluru’s Sanjay Nagar locality of a private company in which a close friend of his worked. He switched off his phone and started using WhatsApp over the web. The police was monitoring his transactions but he was careful not to make any payments using his credit or debit cards, an officer said.
Police, however, used internet protocol detail records (IPDR) analysis to zero in on the IP address he used to communicate with his relatives. A tip-off about the movement of a red Jeep Compass Mishra was driving also helped police apprehend him.

DCP (Airport) Ravi Singh said they had sought information regarding his bookings and CCTV footage from the guesthouse owner. A Delhi police team had been camping in Bengaluru based on Mishra’s last location.
“On January 4, Mishra reported for work at his office on Sarjapur road. After he finished work, he came back home to his apartment in Chikkakannalli, Bengaluru. By this time news of the FIR registered against him had broken and talk about the incident was all over social media and TV channels. At 9.30pm the same day, he took his car and left home,” said an investigator.
Police had visited his sister’s house in Marathahalli, Bengaluru, following a tip-off but were told that Mishra had left on Thursday morning and had switched off his phone, apart from having changed his identity on social media platforms.
Even as some technical inputs were conveyed to the police team from Delhi, a few local sources also informed them that they had seen a red Jeep Compass SUV moving towards the Mysore road. His exact location was obtained using an IP address tracker and he was apprehended. Local police were subsequently informed.
Prior to the raid in Bengaluru, a team had been dispatched to his permanent address in Mumbai but the place was found locked.