Man accused of urinating on his fellow Air India passenger arrested from Bengaluru homestay

Preliminary probe finds that Mumbai-based Shankar Mishra was drunk & committed the act after he couldn’t find a toilet. Arrest comes a day after lookout notice was issued for him.

Shankar Mishra after his arrest | By special arrangement

New Delhi: The man accused of urinating on a fellow passenger on an Air India flight from New York to Delhi has been arrested, a senior police officer in the Delhi Police said Saturday. 

According to police sources, Shankar Mishra was hiding at a homestay in Bengaluru. 

“Accused Shankar Mishra has been arrested from Bangalore by a Delhi Police team. He has been brought to Delhi. The investigation is ongoing,” a senior police officer told ThePrint.

Police teams were on the lookout for him and had been keeping a watch on the places he had stayed in before, another police source said.

“He had earlier stayed in the same homestay,” the source said. “Based on surveillance and local inputs, his location was found to be in this homestay. He was nabbed with assistance from the Bengaluru Police.”

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Airport) Ravi Kumar Singh confirmed the arrest. 

The development comes a day after Wells Fargo, the American finance company where Mishra worked, fired him.   

“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,” the company said in a statement. 

According to police sources, Mishra lives in Mumbai with his wife and daughter. 

The incident took place on 26 November. A First Information Report was lodged against Mishra under sections 294 (obscene act), 354 (outraging a woman’s modesty), 509 (act intended to insult woman’s modesty), and 510 (misconduct in public under influence of alcohol of the Indian Penal Code, as well as relevant sections of the Aircraft Rules 1937.

ThePrint had previously reported that Mishra’s last known location was Bengaluru and that he was suspected to be in touch with his lawyers. 

Several teams were formed and sent to Mumbai and Bengaluru to arrest him. Additionally, a lookout notice had also been issued for him. 

Cabin crew contacted

Sources told ThePrint the Delhi Police has issued summons to eight crew members, including the pilot of the flight. Four crew members have already been contacted, the sources said.

A preliminary probe allegedly shows that Mishra, who was drunk, urinated on an elderly woman after he couldn’t find the washroom.

Mishra’s lawyers Ishani Sharma and Akshat Bajpai said in a statement Friday said that the woman complainant had “condoned” him. 

“WhatsApp messages between the accused and the lady clearly show that the accused had got the clothes and bags cleaned on 28 November and the same were delivered on the 30th November. The lady in her message has clearly condoned the alleged act and has displayed no intention to lodge a complaint,” the lawyers said.

“The lady’s persisting grievance was only with respect to the adequate compensation being paid by the Airline for which she has raised subsequent complaints on 20 December 2022. The accused paid the compensation as agreed between the parties on PayTM on November 28th but after almost a month on December 19 her daughter returned the money back.”

(Edited Uttara Ramaswamy)