Air India hostess who accused boss of sexual harassment to meet Maneka to push her case

File photo of Women and Child Development minister Maneka Gandhi | Facebook

The complainant, who is said to want to ‘fight this till the end’, is willing to move court if necessary.

New Delhi: The Air India crew member who has accused a senior airline executive of sexual harassment is all set to meet women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi in the capital Monday and push her case.

She was asked to visit Delhi for a meeting with the minister after she wrote a second letter to Maneka Gandhi and her civil aviation colleague Suresh Prabhu Friday, ThePrint has learnt.

The minister has confirmed the meeting.

Gandhi had earlier said that she had referred the matter to the civil aviation ministry, which asked Air India to examine the complaint.

The letters

The complainant has recounted her alleged ordeal in great detail in the two letters, which have been made public on social media

In one of them, the complainant, an employee of Air India for over three decades, said she was “shocked” to see that the airline management was still “covering up” for Captain Darryl Pais, the alleged perpetrator she has accused of harassing several women employees of Air India.

She has also accused the airline’s internal complaints committee chairperson, Aruna Gopalakrishnan, of committing a “near criminal breach” by allegedly trivialising the serious sexual harassment charges against Pais. Gopalakrishnan had allegedly dismissed the crew member’s complaint, saying, “So what? He flirts with me too.”

While Prabhu had directed the airline to investigate the accusations Tuesday, after the first letter, Gopalakrishnan was promoted and made the in-flight service department in-charge days later.

Asked to ‘strike a compromise’

According to a source close to the complainant, close associates of Pais had repeatedly asked her to “strike a compromise” before she went public.

She was, in fact, given “virtual threats” that she would lose her job or be demoted if she pursued the complaint, the source added.

While many women, including pilots, are learnt to have told the complainant privately about facing similar ordeals with Pais, none is willing to go on the record. “Their silence intensified after Aruna was promoted,” the source said. “The murmurs in Air India are now that even though she spoke up against him, nothing happened to him.”

However, the complainant, who is said to want to “fight this till the end”, is willing to move court if necessary.

ThePrint’s calls and messages to Pais and Gopalakrishnan for comments went unanswered.

Not the first time

This is, however, not the first time that Air India has found itself in a controversy for reportedly mishandling complaints of sexual harassment against male employees. In 2012, a woman employee of an outsourcing firm contracted by the airline had complained of sexual harassment by an assistant manager.

The woman, who alleged that the manager would force her to see pornographic material and nude photographs, had also claimed that she was sacked after she complained about the episode to her superiors.

In 2016, Binoy Jacob, vice-president of the Air India SATS Airports Services Private Ltd, a subsidiary of the airline, was accused of sexual harassment by a junior, who alleged that he would use “sexually explicit language” while talking to women. The woman had alleged her complaint was not taken seriously by the company, though Jacob was subsequently booked by Kerala police.