AI flyer slams accused, terms claim 'derogatory'

New Delhi, January 14

The elderly woman, who had accused her co-passenger Shankar Mishra of urinating on her on an Air India flight, on Saturday rejected the claims made by him that she seemed to have urinated on herself. She called the charge “completely false and concocted and by its very nature disparaging and derogatory”.

Mishra’s counsel, while arguing against a police plea seeking revision of an order passed by a magisterial court refusing his custodial interrogation, on Friday claimed he did not commit the offence, and that she had wet herself while travelling business class from New York to New Delhi aboard an Air India flight on November 26.

“The said allegations are also in complete contradiction and a complete volte face of the statements and the pleaded case of the accused in his bail application,” advocate Ankur Mahindro, representing the complainant, said in a statement today.

“The accused, instead of being remorseful for the utterly disgusting act, has adopted a campaign of spreading misinformation and falsities with the intent of further harassing the victim,” the statement added.

Mishra’s counsel had told the court that the complainant was suffering from some disease related to prostate, which several “Kathak dancers seem to suffer from”.

Mishra’s claim that Kathak dance performers suffer from bladder problems evoked a flurry of protests from renowned danseuses.

“Mishra’s counsel says 80 per cent of Kathak dancers have problem of incontinence. Has he lost his mind? If so, his licence to practice should be cancelled,” Sharmistha Mukherjee, a noted kathak performer and daughter of the late President Pranab Mukherjee, tweeted.