A day after reserving judgement, a Delhi court today granted bail to Shankar Mishra, accused of allegedly urinating on a woman on board an Air India flight from New York to New Delhi on November 26 last year.
The witnesses named by Delhi police in the case against Shankar Mishra are not deposing in the prosecution's favour, Patiala House Court had observed on Monday.
"The witness you (investigation agency) have named are not deposing in your favour... There is a contradiction in the complainant's statement and Ila Benarjee's (witness) statement," the judge noted during the proceedings yesterday.
The Delhi Police opposed the bail application, saying "India has been defamed internationally because of the incident", to which the judge said, "It may be disgusting, but that is another matter, let's not get into that. Let's go into how the law deals with it." The prosecutor had also claimed Mishra did not cooperate in the investigation and that he had switched off all his mobile phones.
A magisterial court had on January 11 denied bail to Mishra, saying the act was "utterly disgusting and repulsive, shocked the civic consciousness and needed to be deprecated".
The civil aviation regulator, Directorate General of Civil Aviation, earlier fined the airline Rs 30 lakh and suspended the licence of the pilot-in-charge for three months over its handling of the incident.
A penalty of Rs 3 lakh has also been imposed on director-in-flight services of Air India for "failing to discharge her duties" by the DGCA.
Air India had earlier this month imposed a four-month flying ban on Shankar Mishra, in addition to the 30-day ban it had imposed on him earlier.
There has been some opposition to the air regulator's reaction. Air India called the suspension of the pilot's licence "excessive".
"Air India wishes to acknowledge the good faith efforts made by crew to handle the situation effectively in real time, when not all facts were available," it said in a statement, adding that it deemed "the licence suspension of the commander excessive and will be assisting him with an appeal".
Meanwhile, Air India itself is facing criticism for de-rostering the crew that operated the New York-Delhi flight. Cabin crew body, All India's Cabin Crew Association (AICCA), has demanded that the airline should roll back derostering of the crew. AICCA also called the suspension of the pilot's licence "unusually harsh punishment".
Earlier this month, Air India issued show cause notices to the Pilot-in-Command and four crew members of the flight and derostered them pending investigation.
Shankar Mishra, who was allegedly drunk during the mid-air incident, had freely walked away when the flight reached India. On November 27, the woman wrote to the Air India group chairman about the horrid 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". He was arrested by the Delhi Police two days later, six weeks after the incident.
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