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The bank magnate downed four whiskeys for lunch – then he urinated on a 70-year-old woman in business class.
But Air India staff let the man off as usual and did not file a police report.
Now the scandal has exploded and forced the CEO of the aviation giant to apologize.
Shankar Mishra, 34, worked as vice president of the American financial company Well Fargo in India.
On Friday, he was fired – and arrested by the police after being wanted.
The background is an incident on board Air India flight AI 102 from New York to Delhi on November 26. In a drunken state, Shankar Misra unbuttoned his pants and urinated unprovoked on a 70-year-old fellow passenger in business class.
It wasn’t until January 4 that the airline reported the incident to the police, and it was the prelude to a magnificent scandal where Air India’s actions are now being questioned.
In documents such as among others Indian NDTV took notice the woman has described in detail the sequence of events on board.
She states that she contacted the cabin crew and alerted them to the fact that her chair, clothes, bag and shoes were completely soaked. But the flight attendants “refused to touch them” and sprayed her bag and shoes with disinfectant.
She did get a pair of pajamas and a pair of socks. But she was not allowed to change seats – despite the fact that, according to another passenger, there were free seats.
“The flight attendant said that the pilot had refused to give me a seat in first class,” the woman writes according to the report.
She states that she demanded the arrest of Shankar Misra once they had landed. Then she got the answer instead that he wanted to apologize privately.
“I made it clear that I did not want to talk to him or see his face. But the crew brought him to me against my will and made us sit opposite each other in the staff seats.”
Appealed: “Has a wife and children”
The woman writes that the bank CEO started crying and apologized. He pleaded with her not to file a report as he has a wife and children.
“In my already agitated state, I was even more confused by having to confront and negotiate with the person responsible for such a horrible incident. I told him his actions were inexcusable, but in the face of his pleas and in my own shock and trauma, I found it difficult to insist that he be arrested.”
Arriving in Delhi, Shankar Mishra got off the plane as usual. No police report was filed.
The next day, the woman, with the help of a younger relative, sent a formal complaint to Air India. Among other things, she demanded the money back, a request that was only partially granted.
Then she instead wrote a letter to the airline’s chairman of the board, the contents of which began to leak this week. Only then, on Wednesday, did Air India report the incident to the police and the woman’s entire story became known.
The CEO apologizes
The airline is now being investigated by the Indian equivalent of the Civil Aviation Authority and on Saturday Air India announced that a pilot and four flight attendants have been suspended.
“Internal investigations are ongoing into whether more of the staff have made mistakes in terms of serving alcohol, handling incidents and registering complaints. Air India admits that these issues could have been handled better, both in the air and on the ground, and we will now take action,” said the company’s CEO Campbell Wilson in a statement obtained by the British Independent.
The co-passenger confirms the progress
The woman’s story is confirmed by passenger Sugata Bhattacharjee who was sitting next to the banker. He works as a doctor in the United States and states to the Times of India that he alerted the cabin crew to Shankar Mishra’s high degree of intoxication even before the woman was urinated on.
– He was a messy, drunk passenger. He downed four glasses of single malt whiskey at lunch alone and must have drunk even more both before and after. He asked me the same thing three times: “What are your children doing?”. Then I approached a man in the crew and told them they had to stop serving him alcohol.
Sugata Bhattacharjee was sitting by the window in seat 8A. In the row behind were two women, one of whom would soon be drenched in urine. The doctor witnessed the entire course of events and shares the woman’s outrage at the staff’s actions:
– Although she was clearly upset, she was convinced by the crew to talk to the man who peed on her. A drunk guy is a drunk guy. When you see a guy commit a crime like this, you don’t take him to the victim to make him apologize.