The head of Indian conglomerate Tata Sons has expressed ‘anguish’ over an incident in which a drunken man allegedly urinated on a female passenger on one of their flights.
The incident happened in late November on an Air India flight operated by Tata. But that only came to light last week when the woman filed a complaint.
The news sparked massive outrage in India, with criticism over Air India’s handling of the incident.
The man was arrested over the weekend.
He was also fired from his job at US banking firm Wells Fargo.
In a statement on Sunday, Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran said the airline should have been quicker in its response.
“We will review and fix every process to prevent or deal with any incident of such an unruly nature,” he said.
His statement came a day after Air India chief executive Campbell Wilson expressed his “regret” and “sorrow” at the suffering of his customers due to the “reprehensible acts of their co-passengers”.
The incident happened Nov. 26 in the business class cabin of a New York-Delhi flight. Defendant Shankar Mishra was reportedly drunk when he urinated on one of his co-passengers, a 72-year-old woman.
“My clothes, my shoes and my bag were completely soaked in urine,” the woman said. wrote in his complaint to Mr. Chandrasekaran the next day.
The woman said she asked the crew to change seats, but was told nothing was available and instead was offered a small seat used by staff. She alleged the crew also brought the man to her – against his wishes – so he could apologise.
The woman described the flight as the most “traumatic” of her life and said the airline had only given her a partial ticket refund. His account was supported by an American doctor named Sugata Bhattacharjee, who sat next to Mr Mishra during the flight.
He told the NDTV news channel that he also wrote a complaint to Air India on the day of the incident, but “it came to nothing”.
After the incident, Air India formed an internal committee to investigate the complaint against Mr Mishra.
Two weeks later, he imposed a 30-day temporary travel ban on her – the length of the ban was one of the factors that sparked outrage once the news broke.
At the request of the woman’s family, the airline eventually filed a complaint with the police regarding the December 28 incident.
A week later, he submitted a report to India’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Last week, the DGCA issued notices to flight officials and crew, saying they failed to follow its rules for handling an unruly passenger on board. He also said the conduct of the crew had been “unprofessional”.
Air India has since retired a pilot and four cabin crew members.
In his statement, Mr Wilson promised a robust reporting system for unruly behavior by Air India.
On Friday, Wells Fargo released a statement saying it had fired Mr Mishra and was “cooperating with law enforcement”.
Mr Mishra was arrested in Bangalore (also known as Bengaluru) on Saturday and charged with offenses including sexual harassment and public misconduct. He was then taken to Delhi and brought before a local court, which sent him into custody for 14 days.
Prior to his arrest, Mr Mishra issued a statement through his lawyer, in which he claimed to have had the woman’s bags and clothes cleaned two days after the incident.
“The lady’s persistent grievance related only to the adequate compensation paid by the airline for which she filed a subsequent complaint on December 20, 2022,” the statement said.
He added that “statements recorded before the Board of Inquiry by the cabin crew show that there are no eyewitnesses to the incident and all statements are hearsay evidence only.”
“The accused has full confidence in the country’s justice system and will cooperate with the investigative process,” the statement added.
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