Shankar Mishra urinated on an elderly woman in the business class of the Air India flight.
Shankar Mishra, who has been arrested for urinating on a woman on an Air India New York-Delhi flight last year, was "incoherent" after too many drinks and kept asking the same question repeatedly, a co-passenger told NDTV.
Sugata Bhattacharjee, a US-based doctor who was seated next to Shankar Mishra in the business class on the November 26 flight, said he had flagged his drunken state to the crew.
"When he was asking me the same question multiple times, I realised that he may be incoherent. I did flag it to the crew, and he just smiled," Dr Bhattacharjee told NDTV.
Shankar Mishra – sacked by Wells Fargo after the incident – told Dr Bhattacharjee that he was drinking as he had a long day and had not slept well. "He told me he drank to get a good night's sleep," said Dr Bhattacharjee.
Shortly after this conversation, Shankar Mishra allegedly went to a 70-year-old woman, unzipped and urinated on her. When the flight landed in Delhi, Mishra walked away without any action by Air India. A day later, the woman wrote to the Air India group chairman about the appalling incident. Air India filed a police complaint only on January 4, claiming it didn't go to the police as it felt both sides had "settled the matter".
Mishra was arrested on Friday from Bengaluru, six weeks after his egregious act.
Dr Bhattacharjee said he complained to the airline too, but nothing happened.
"My moral responsibility was to stand up for a fellow passenger, and that is why I wrote a two-page complaint. And it went nowhere," he said.
Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran has admitted that Air India's response should have been swifter. "We fell short of addressing this situation the way it should have been," Mr Chandrasekaran said in a statement on Sunday.
Mishra has been placed in judicial custody for a fortnight.