Air India urination case: I did not pee on woman, accused Shankar Mishra tells court | India News

NEW DELHI: Shankar Mishra, accused of urinating on a woman passenger on an Air India flight from New York to Delhi, on Friday rejected the charges in a Delhi court and claimed that the woman had peed on herself. He is presently in judicial custody.
“I did not urinate on complainant. The complainant woman’s seat was blocked. It wasn’t possible for him (Mishra) to go there. The woman has a problem of incontinence. She urinated on herself. She is a Kathak dancer, 80% of kathak dancers have this issue,” Shankar Mishra’s counsel told Delhi court.

“Her seat could only be approached from behind, and in any case the urine could not reach to seat’s front area. Also, the passanger sitting behind the complainant did not make any such complain,” defence advocate said. The judge was hearing Delhi police’s plea seeking custodial interrogation of the accused.

Last week, a team of four police officials from Delhi arrested Mishra from Bengaluru.

Mishra has been accused of allegedly urinated on a 70-year-old woman in an inebriated condition in the business class of the Air India flight on November 26 last year.

He was sacked from US financial services firm Wells Fargo on earlier this month. “Wells Fargo holds employees to the highest standards of professional and personal behaviour and we find these allegations deeply disturbing. This individual has been terminated from Wells Fargo,” the company said.

The senior citizen, who was too shocked to react, had written to Tata Group chairman N Chandrasekaran about the incident.
Calling them ‘unprofessional’, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Thursday issued show cause notices to Air India officials, including all the pilots and cabin crew members who operated the New York to Delhi flight on November 26.
N Chandrasekaran, who is chairman of both Tata Sons and Air India, admitted that their response to the incident should have been “much swifter”.
In a statement which was issued four days after the incident came to light and after regulator DGCA pulled up Air India, Chandrasekaran said: “We fell short of addressing this situation the way we should have.” This is the first public relations crisis Air India is facing after Tata Sons, under the leadership of Chandrasekaran, acquired the carrier from the government last year.
“The Tata Group and Air India stand by the safety and well-being of our passengers and crew with full conviction. We will review and repair every process to prevent or address any incidents of such unruly nature,” said Chandrasekaran, expressing his “personal anguish”.
Meanwhile, Air India had de-rostered four cabin crew and a pilot of the New York-Delhi AI 102 flight after the DGCA issued show-cause notices to the carrier, its director of in-flight services and the crew that had operated the international flight.
(With agency inputs)