Air India ‘urination’ case: Accused Shankar Mishra wants appellate body to look into no-fly order

The submission was made before a single judge bench of Justice Prathiba Singh, wherein DGCA’s counsel submitted that the issue pertains to unruly behaviour on an Air India flight. Mishra in his plea claimed that during the flight he was “woken up and informed by the cabin crew that the passenger seated on seat 9A of the business class, a woman aged about 72 years old, had made certain allegations against him”.

“There is an order against this gentleman, so he wants to file an appeal which is provided. There is a committee constituted by the former judge of this High Court… may have it after a week or 10 days we will put the constitution on record. We are informed that they (Mishra) have sent an email that they wish to challenge the order,” the counsel said.

Allowing the DGCA to submit the constitution of the appellate committee within a week the court listed the matter on March 23.

Mishra has sought for a direction to the DGCA to constitute an appellate committee to challenge the January 18 order of the internal inquiry committee of Air India, which held that the allegations against Mishra “in the ‘proforma for reporting for unruly/disruptive passenger’ stand established” and putting him in the “no-fly list”. The order banned him from flying for a period of four months.

The plea stated that the “Civil Aviation Requirements for Unruly Passengers” (CAR) issued by the Office of the Director General of Civil Aviation through a 2017 memorandum calls for the constitution of the appellate committee. It stated that CAR categorically grants Mishra a statutory right to an appeal allowing him to challenge the internal committee’s order within 60 days. The plea stated that Mishra’s counsel wrote to DGCA to constitute the appellate committee on January 19 and on January 20 along with repeated reminders however no such committee was constituted.

Mishra claimed that Air India’s order suffers from grave infirmities and completely misunderstands the layout of the aircraft and the location of the seats in the business class cabin of the aircraft. “The location of the seat and the layout were central to the defence presented by the petitioner, but the inquiry committee has completely premised its findings on this wrong understanding of the aircraft layout, instead of dealing with the Petitioner’s contentions,” the plea claimed.