Shankar Mishra, accused of allegedly urinating on a woman on an Air India flight last November, told a Delhi court Friday that the complainant urinated on herself because of a medical condition and then blamed him for the act. The complainant later issued a statement and called the allegations false and derogatory”.
Mishra’s lawyer, senior advocate Ramesh Gupta, appeared before Additional Sessions Judge Harjyot Singh Bhalla and said the police investigation “was a joke” as it was “impossible for Mishra to access her seat in the business class”.
Gupta told the court that the complainant says the person who urinated on her was seated at 8A but Mishra was seated at 8C. Even if this was an error on part of the complainant, even police “did not correct this in their remand application”.
“He was defamed in front of the whole country, lost his job. Look at the seating pattern, it is impossible for Mishra to have walked over to her seat and urinated on her. It was a business class seat and there was no way to gain entry to her seat. Furthermore, there was another passenger sitting next to her. If Mishra urinated on her, it would have even landed on the passenger who is also a 70-year-old lady. She has made no such complainant. This lady (complainant) is suffering from a medical condition… she urinated on herself and is now blaming Mishra,” Gupta told the court.
ASJ Harjyot said that even he has travelled in business class seats and said, “If you can’t cut across, doesn’t mean you can’t come around.”
Mishra’s lawyers also showed a seating plan to the judge to further buttress their arguments. The judge asked whether there the accused was suffering from a prostrate problem while dealing with the allegations that it was impossible for Mishra to urinate on the woman at a distance.
Responding to the allegations, the complainant issued a statement through her lawyer Ankur Mahindro stating that the allegations are “disparaging” and “a complete volte face of the statements and the pleaded case of the accused in his bail application”.
“The endeavour of the victim throughout has been to ensure that institutional changes are made so that no individual has to go through the horrendous experience… However, the accused, instead of being remorseful… has adopted a campaign of spreading misinformation and falsities with the intent of further harassing the victim.”
The court also disposed off a revision petition filed by police challenging the dismissal of the police custody remand. The court stated that police was at liberty to approach the court concerned with a fresh police custody remand raising a series of fresh grounds which were raised for the first time before it and not argued before Metropolitan Magistrate
Anamika, who initially heard the remand application.
The prosecutor had moved the revision petition stating that the accused was in an intoxicated state from the beginning and his custody was required to see if he consumed any intoxicants before the flight. Police also wanted to ascertain the identity of the accused who helped him evade police.
ASJ Harjyot said, “What do you have to recover? In this case, do you need a sample of his urine? The crew would have informed how much liquor would have been given to him.
His blood test was not done. There is no way to determine how much alcohol he consumed. The offence is he is unzipping his pants, how are we concerned with what happened before unless there is a case of prior enmity. We have to see the offence. This is not a case of malafide, that some altercation took place, that he did out of spite.”
The court also asked, “What alcohol was consumed by him how will you ascertain?” “What is the devil’s mind is only devil knows,” the prosecutor told the court.
The judge noted that these grounds were not raised before the Metropolitan Magistrate during the initial remand application. The prosecutor submitted that ground of remand application was wide enough to include the aforesaid submissions as ground for police custody.
The ASJ, however, said in case these (fresh) grounds were not urged, then no fault can be found in refusing to grant remand. It said that the possibility that the grounds were not raised before the magistrate were higher. “Two grounds were dealt with Magistrate and shows application of mind… Submissions made before me do not seem to have been raised. Even otherwise, if certain additional facts are discovered, a second application on the same grounds would be entertained,” the court said.
On January 11, the court denied bail to Mishra and called the act of relieving himself upon the woman utterly disgusting and repulsive. The court said that the “alleged act in itself is sufficient to outrage the modesty of any woman. Egregious conduct of the accused has shocked civic consciousness and needs to be deprecated”.
On January 7, Mishra was sent to judicial custody by the court which said that “all reasons for PC remand do not require the physical presence of the accused”. It said there was “no material to show any further interrogation is required for conducting investigation at this stage”.
