During the November 26 flight, an inebriated man, who was seated in the row ahead of the woman on the flight, walked towards her and urinated on her, soiling her clothes, shoes, and bag containing documents including her passport. Following the woman’s complaint, 34-year-old Shankar was booked by the Delhi police under Sections 294 (obscene act in any public place), 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) and 510 (misconduct in public by a drunken person) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Delhi police arrested the accused, Mumbai based Shankar Mishra, from Bengaluru. The arrest came a day after a lookout notice was issued against him, following which the police sent search parties to Mumbai and Bengaluru in search for Shankar, who was absconding ever since the issue came to light. As per reports, although Shankar had switched off his phone, the police managed to track him down to Bengaluru as he was using his social media accounts to communicate with his friends. Air India has issued a formal apology over the urination row that has put the airline on the backfoot. Campbell Wilson, CEO of the Tata Group-owned airline on Saturday apologised for a flyer urinating on a fellow female passenger on a flight from New York in November. Wilson said in a statement that Air India is reviewing its policy on serving alcohol on flights. He also added that the four cabin crew and a pilot have been de-rostered.
The CEO has conceded that the situation could have been handled better and promised a robust reporting system to control unruly passengers and a system of reporting such incidents. With questions being raised about the airline not immediately reporting the unruly passenger to law enforcement authorities, he advised staff to report all incidents irrespective of a settlement being reached. Air India continues to provide support to the affected passengers and ensure their well-being.
Meanwhile, Shankar Mishra was sacked from US financial services firm Wells Fargo, where he was a vice president. “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. We are cooperating with law enforcement and ask that any additional inquiries be directed to them,” said the company in a statement.
As per Mishra’s LinkedIn profile, which he has now deleted, he joined Wells Fargo in February last year, and was the process head for asset backed securitisation and lending business. Prior to Wells Fargo, he worked for ten years with Citi as assistant VP responsible for handling risk management functions of large corporate clients. He had studied at Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies in Mumbai.
Earlier Mishra changed his name on his LinkedIn profile to Suraj M, but social media users quickly caught on to it, since everything else on the profile remained the same. Later, Mishra deleted the account.