According to press reports, Shankar Mishra, the man accused of urinating on an elderly female co-passenger on an Air India aircraft, told a Delhi sessions court on Friday that the complainant urinated on herself and that he did not urinate on her.
According to PTI, Mishra’s attorney told the Delhi Court, I did not urinate on the complainant. The seat of the complainant woman was blocked. He (Mishra) was unable to travel there. Incontinence is an issue for the woman. Her own urine was used. She is a Kathak dancer, and according to the lawyer, 80% of Kathak dancers experience this problem, according to ANI.
The claim by Mishra’s attorney, made for the first time since the incident occurred on an Air India flight from New York to New Delhi on November 26 of last year, contradicts accusations made against the accused by some of the other passengers as well as a series of WhatsApp conversations he had with the victim woman that seemed to support the idea that the unsavoury incident did in fact occur.She had a condition involving the prostate, I believe. He wasn’t doing it. No one could move to her seat because of the arrangement of the chairs, the attorney reportedly claimed. To go from one side of the aeroplane to the other, according to the sessions court judge, is not impossible. I’m sorry, but I’ve also travelled. The judge instructed and requested a seating chart for the trip, saying that anyone from any row could turn around and take any seat.
Her seat could only be accessed from the back, and the urine could not, in any event, reach the seat’s front region. Additionally, the passenger who was seated behind the complainant did not raise this concern, the defence attorney told the court.
The judge was considering the Delhi Police’s request to question the defendants while they were in custody. Mishra received a notification from the Delhi Sessions Court after the Delhi Police applied for permission to question him in custody once more.
The motion to review a decision made on January 7 by a metropolitan magistrate sentencing Mishra to a 14-day judicial remand while rejecting police custody was heard by Additional Sessions Judge Harjyot Singh Bhalla.
On the motion submitted by the police, the judge gave notice to the accused as well as a production warrant.
On Wednesday, Metropolitan Magistrate Komal Garg refused Mishra’s request for bail while describing his behaviour as utterly unpleasant and repulsive.
The act, according to the court, shocked people’s civic consciousness and ought to be condemned.
