Shankar Mishra, the man accused of urinating on an elderly woman co-passenger on an Air India flight, in his bail plea, has alleged that complainant was suffering from urinary incontinence as the bed sheet she was provided with after the incident was reported to have remained wet, proving her health condition, according to the copy of the petition accessed by CNN-News18 on Friday.
Mishra is accused of walking up to the woman’s seat in the business class on an Air India New York-New Delhi flight on November 26 in an inebriated state, exposing himself and urinating on her. The Delhi Police had registered an FIR against Mishra on January 4 on the complaint of the victim woman.
Mishra’s counsel, on January 13, had, in its oral argument, claimed he did not commit the alleged offence and that the complainant urinated on herself. “I’m not the accused. There must be someone else. She herself urinated. She was suffering from some prostate-related disease,” he had stated.
However, in its first submission to the court regarding its claims against the complainant on Friday, the plea stated that “it is not uncommon that many persons are suffering from incontinence.”
“It is not a disease but a symptom of a disease and health conditions,” it read, adding the “issue of incontinence is an outcome of our habits/medical conditions and physical condition.”
It cited the claim of the complainant in which she had stated that even after a bed sheet was placed on the seat, it remained wet. It said the claim “increased the possibility that the victim has the condition of urinary incontinence and involuntarily may have passed on the urine.”
Mishra’s lawyer had earlier told the court that the complainant’s seat could only be approached from behind, adding that the woman urinated on herself due to a problem that many kathak dancers have, and “when she realised what happened, she didn’t know what happened”. “Also, the passenger sitting behind the complainant did not make any such complaint,” he had stated.
Victim Rejected Claims
The woman complainant has previously rejected the claims made by him that she seems to have urinated on herself and stated are “completely false and concocted and by their very nature are disparaging and derogatory”.
“The allegations are completely false and concocted and by their very nature are disparaging and derogatory. The said allegations are also in complete contradiction and a complete volte face of the statements and the pleaded case of the accused in his bail application,” advocate Ankur Mahindro, representing the complainant, said in a statement.
Mishra’s Bail Hearing
A sessions court on Friday adjourned the hearing of the bail application of Shankar Mishra to January 30 as the investigating officer in the case did not turn up. Mishra applied afresh for regular bail after a magisterial court dismissed his application on January 11, saying his act had shocked the civic consciousness of people and needed to be deprecated.
Mishra is currently lodged in a Delhi jail.
Following the outcry over the incident, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) suspended the license of the pilot for three months, imposed a penalty of Rs 30 lakh on Air India and Rs 3 lakh on the director of the airline’s in-flight services. Air India also imposed a four-month flying ban on Shankar Mishra after the incident.
Air India Closes Internal Probe
In its statement on Tuesday on the closure of its internal committee report, Air India acknowledged that it did not correctly classify the incident and therefore did not report it as required as per the regulations.
However, without mentioning the accused name, it stated that the crew took the complainant’s allegation at face value in the absence of any witness.
“In the absence of any witnesses, the crew took the complainant’s allegation at face value and assisted her by providing fresh clothes, helping clean her belongings and relocating her to another business class seat of the same type as her original one. When awoken and confronted with the allegation, the alleged perpetrator was calm, co-operative and professed ignorance of the allegation,” it said.
The airline also clarified that the accused passenger had not been served “excessive alcohol” by the crew and did not appear “intoxicated” to the crew.
Air India said there was no risk to flight safety and that a resolution was witnessed between the parties. “The crew made a judgement call to record the matter as an (non-reportable) in-flight incident rather than a (reportable) case of unruliness”.
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