Co-passenger Who Was Seated Next To Shankar Mishra On Air India Flight Recalls 'Peeing' Shocker
Sugata Bhattacharjee, a US-based doctor of audiology who was seated next to accused Shankar Mishra in business class on the New York-New Delhi Air India flight, has slammed the crew for inaction over 'peeing' shocker.?Mishra allegedly urinated on a woman co-passenger during the November 26 flight while in an inebriated state.
He noted that the accused was incoherent, and blamed the pilot for the inaction in dealing with the situation.?"I would not have been this vocal. I waited, but when his father said this did not happen, it triggered me," Bhattacharjee told PTI in an interview over the phone.
Blamed pilot for inaction
He revealed that after the accused urinated on the old lady, the flight crew cleaned her seat, and kept blankets on seat smelling of urine, rather than offering her Shankar Mishra's seat.??
Bhattacharjee, who had earlier claimed that the captain of the flight made the traumatised victim wait for close to two hours before allocating her a fresh seat, alleged that the crew didn't do anything to pacify distressed passenger.
"Multiple failures in the procedural part"
¡°The lady (victim) was quite decent. Two junior air hostesses cleaned her up. I went to the senior stewardess and asked them to give her another seat, she said that she can't do that as they had to take permission from the captain,¡± ANI quoted Bhattacharjee as saying.
"The dignity of a woman was played with. The Tata name has been tarnished. It's not a happy story. But at the end of the day, it was a moral call for me, it was morality and I thought it was my moral obligation to stand and make a complaint and I did," he said.
"My anger was that nobody stood up to the responsibility and there were multiple failures in the procedural part," he said.
"It's a sexual assault"
He said for the crew to make the woman talk to Mishra after the incident to sort out the matter was a "no-no because indecent exposure is a crime. It's a sexual assault. And once that happens, nobody should take a mediation route."?
Bhattacharjee sat in seat number 8A, while Mishra was in seat 8C in the business class.Bhattacharjee in a handwritten complaint to the airlines had stated that the distressed passenger was made to go back to her soiled seat despite four seats in the first class being vacant.
Recounts shocker
Recounting the events, Bhattacharjee said that Mishra had been drinking as he ate lunch and he "drank four stiff drinks right through the lunch. Mishra had then fallen asleep and at some point Bhattacharjee woke up when Mishra "practically" fell on his seat. Bhattacharjee said he thought Mishra lost his balance because of turbulence.
Bhattacharjee said that he then slept, and after he woke up, "I saw (Mishra) is bright awake, has sobered up and the crew has already spoken to him once" about the incident.
"The first thing Mishra said was 'Bro I think I am in trouble'. And my answer was, 'yes, you are'. And, he's like, I don't know what to do, I don't remember anything happening. I had not slept, I had too many drinks." He added that as Mishra sobered up, he seemed "afraid".
"But nothing justifies things like that. I am a man of giving a second chance. But I still can't understand why he did that and if you cannot handle alcohol, you should not drink that amount," he said.
A Delhi court on Saturday sent Mishra, who allegedly urinated on the woman co-passenger on an Air India flight, to judicial remand for 14 days while rejecting a plea by police for his custody.
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