In another incident, passenger misbehaves with woman, gets
de-boarded in Mumbai.
January is taking top flight as the month of indecent assaults. After Wednesday, when three Churchill Brothers footballers were arrested for molesting an airhostess, three more incidents of passengers misbehaving with women have occurred, the last two at around midnight on Saturday and on Sunday.
The alleged offender in Saturday’s incident, Bruno Augustin D’Souza, 53, works as a ship captain, and was travelling economy class on a Jet Airways Hong Kong-Mumbai flight (9W075). In Sunday’s incident, the flight — Air India Dubai-Calicut (IC 537) — had to be diverted to Mumbai because of the unruly behaviour of a passenger Shakti P, 28.
When D’Souza got up from his seat to visit the toilet, he found a “long queue outside the loo. So he started yelling and abusing the crew”, said a man who was a co-passenger. “He asked the crew if he could use the toilet in the business class. When they told him to wait, he started insulting them, saying the airline was ‘useless’ and had bad service.”
After coming out of the toilet, he started hurling expletives at the crew. The pilot then told him that he would be handed over to the police once the flight landed, unless he behaved. “He returned to his seat but didn’t stop being foul-mouthed. Then he pressed the bell again and again to call the airhostess.”
“When an airhostess (aged 35) attended to him, he touched her and tried to fondle her,” said an officer from the Sahar police station. The pilot intervened again.
After the flight landed in Mumbai at 2am, the passenger was handed over to the police. He was charged under sections 354 (outraging a woman’s modesty) and 504 (insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) of the Indian Penal Code and produced at the Bandra metropolitan court.
He was let out on bail.
But a Jet Airways spokesperson said on Sunday the case is of disruptive behaviour by a passenger and not of molestation. Later, the airlines issued a press statement, which read: “Jet Airways confirms that on its Hong Kong-Mumbai service of yesterday, January 09, 2010, one of the guests on board, who appeared to be in an inebriated state, was disruptive and abusive.
“As per national and international procedures, upon arrival at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai, the individual concerned was handed over to the airport security.”
About Shakti P, an Air India official said: “First of all,he was drunk and was caught smoking in the loo. Later, when he went back to his seat, he misbehaved with a woman passenger and tried to touch her inappropriately.”
The pilot diverted the flight to Mumbai, where it landed at 6.15pm; the passenger was handed over to the Central Industrial Security Force. The plane took-off at 7.15pm.
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