PremiumAir India ‘pee-gate’ update: An Air India official said that the New York-Delhi flight urination accused Shankar Mishra has been banned from flying with the airline for four months, news agency ANI reported.
Shankar Mishra is accused or urinating on an elderly woman in an inebriated state on a Delhi bound flight from New York on 26 November 2022.
Mishra, who was reportedly the Vice President of the India chapter of American financial company Wells Fargo, had allegedly urinated on the septuagenarian shortly after lunch was served post which lights within the cabin were switched off.
The septuagenarian had sent a complain to Tata Sons chairperson N Chandrasekharan alleging that her clothes, shoes and baggage smelt of urine and the crew did little to help her out of the situation. According to her complaint, the elderly woman was asked to return to her urine drenched-towel covered-urine smelling seat after a two hour hiatus.
The Delhi Police has registered a complaint against Shankar Mishra, after the incident came to limelight and Mishra, a resident of Mumbai, was arrested from Bengaluru with the help of Bengaluru Police, from his sister's place.
At the Delhi court, Mishra's lawyer refuted the allegations and said that the elderly woman had pee-ed on herself, even bringing in an unproven ‘prostrate issue of a Kathak dancer’ to substantiate their claim.
"I (Mishra) am not the accused. There must be someone else. It seems she herself urinated. She was suffering from some disease related to prostate, which several 'kathak dancers' seem to suffer from. It was not him. The seating system was such that no one could go to her seat. Her seat could only be approached from behind, and in any case the urine could not reach to seat's front area. Also, the passenger sitting behind the complainant did not make any such complain," senior advocate Ramesh Gupta, appearing for Mishra, told the judge.
The woman has further refuted Mishra's claim and called them "completely false and concocted and by their very nature are disparaging and derogatory".