The Air India urination incident fraught with numerous twists took yet another sensational turn on Friday with accused Shankar Mishra’s legal team claiming that the complainant urinated on herself.
The sordid incident where Mumbai resident Shankar Mishra is being accused of allegedly peeing on a woman co-flyer in an inebriated state in November of 2022, has been sparking an outrage ever since it was first reported at the start of 2023.
However, it is the 4 statements recorded by Mishra in 7 days and a plethora of arguments put forth by his lawyers that has kept the people hooked.
Also Read: ‘Stupid & Ridiculous’: Kathak Dancers Angry at New Claim by Air India Pee Case Accused
- On January 6, the accused released a statement saying the matter was settled and compensation was paid to the elderly woman. “The WhatsApp messages between the accused and the lady clearly show that the accused had got the clothes and bags cleaned on November 28 and the same were delivered on November 30,” Shankar Mishra said in a statement through his lawyers. “The lady in her message has clearly condoned the alleged act and has displayed no intention to lodge a complaint,” it added.
- A few days later, in another statement, Shankar Mishra’s lawyer, Manu Sharma, tried to defend his act of obscenity in front of a Delhi court by saying that Mishra could not control his drink on the flight but the “unzipping incident was not for sexual desire”. He further added that the complainant, who is an elderly woman, in her case has not marked him as a lustful man.
- However, it was Friday’s court hearing that brought a new twist to the sordid tale, with Shankar Mishra’s lawyer alleging that his client did not commit the offensive act and that the woman seems to have urinated on herself. “I’m not the accused. There must be someone else. It seems she herself urinated. She was suffering from some disease related to the prostate which several ‘Bharatanatyam dancers’ seem to suffer from. It was not me. The seating system was such that no one could go to her seat,” Shankar Mishra told the 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 passenger sitting behind the complainant did not make any such complaint,” the defense advocate told the judge on Friday.
- Later, Mishra’s advocate Ishane Sharma told news agency ANI that there is a lack of witnesses to the incident and the case came to light only when the woman complainant had claimed herself about the happening.“The woman (victim) was sitting on 9A and there was another woman sitting next to her. They claim that he urinated in such a way that the woman next to her wasn’t at all affected,” ANI quoted Sharma as saying.“How is that possible, how is the other woman not enraged? This logic fails basic physics and we have been saying this from the start. There have not been any old grudges between the both. What was alleged does not make sense,” Mishra’s advocate added.
- Shankar Mishra’s counsel Ramesh Gupta on Friday also said the police and the press have turned this case into a joke, removed Mishra from his job, and called him an absconder.
Also Read: Air India Urination Row: How Flow of Claims And Counterclaims Has Muddied Waters
The lawyer’s charges on the victim suffering from urinary incontinence, a common phenomenon among Kathak dancers did not sit well with the artist community.
Calling the claim “stupid and ridiculous”, Kathak dancer Shovana Narayan, in a conversation with News18, questioned how the woman could have urinated on herself. “A person peeing has nothing to do with vocation…. It’s a very stupid, baseless and ridiculous argument. How can she pee on herself? She could only have peed into the seat. ‘On herself’ is different from peeing ‘into a seat’,” Narayan said.
Manisha Gulyani from the Jaipur Gharana, who has been practising Kathak for 30 years, in fact, said it is the other way around.“The use of pelvic area in Kathak is more and the core gets strengthened due to regular practice. So, whosoever says that Kathak dancers face urination problem is far-fetched (sic),” she told News18.
“He is trying to create a diversion from the fact that he has outraged a woman’s modesty. I think this is what we all need to understand that this is not done. you cannot pee on a person,” Padma Awardee Kathak dancer Shovana Narayan was quoted telling ANI.
‘Legal Team Pervert Like Him’
Shankar Mishra, the man accused of urinating on a woman passenger on a New York-New Delhi Air India flight in November last year is truly a pervert and so is his legal team, Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi said. This statement comes from Mishra’s denunciation of committing any such activities and pinning the blame on the victim for having peed on herself.
Earlier, co-passengers on the flight who were seated in Business Class where the incident unfolded rebuked the airline for its handling of the situation. Sugata Bhattacharjee, a US-based doctor of audiology who was seated next to the accused, told the airlines in a handwritten complaint that the distressed passenger was made to go back to her soiled seat despite four seats in the First Class being vacant.
“A senior citizen was subjected to trauma due to indecency of a passenger. She being a female had no idea how to cope with the obscenity,” he wrote. “I personally am bothered by the fact that the captain waited close to two hours before allotting her a fresh seat.”
Letter to Seniors From Air India Crew
Air India has been under fire over its “lackadaisical response” to the incident with the victim claiming on record that no timely relief was provided to her post the traumatic incident on the flight onboard from New York to Delhi.
However, in a fresh turn of events in the case which has been turned into a ‘he said, she said’ scenario, India today reported that the Air India crew of the New York-Delhi flight had written to their seniors about the urination incident hours after their flight landed in Delhi.
In the email, the crew member said that they were quick to take action and helped the lady change her clothes as well as assured her of all the help.
“Crew also cleaned the area, and her belongings and sanitized her shoes. The belonging of guests seated on adjacent seats was also cleaned. She claimed she was well-connected and wanted to file a police complaint. We categorically informed her that Air India takes such incidents very seriously, appropriate process and procedures are in place to ensure handling such incidents in an efficient way,” the email read.
In the mail dated November 27, the Air India staff said that after the incident, Mishra apologized and agreed to give her monetary compensation and also get her clothes and shoes dry cleaned. The email further claimed that the woman started to demand compensation from Air India while they were assisting her post the traumatic experience.
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