NEW DELHI — Indian police on Saturday arrested a top executive of a U.S.-based banking company in connection with an episode in late November in which the executive is alleged to have urinated on another passenger on an Air India flight from New York to New Delhi.
The executive, Shankar Mishra — who was recently fired from his job as a vice president of the Indian subsidiary of Wells Fargo — faces charges under several Indian laws, including sexual harassment, obscenity and insulting the modesty of a woman. He has been sent to judicial custody for 14 days, according to local media reports.
News of the episode, which became public after the airline filed a police complaint Wednesday, has prompted outrage on Indian social media. The delay between the event and the complaint has also raised questions about how Air India handled the situation.
According to a statement from the victim, a 72-year-old woman whose name the police did not release, Mishra appeared to be drunk on the flight where it happened, in business class.
In a complaint written to the chair of Air India on Nov. 27, the day after the flight arrived in New Delhi, the victim demanded the immediate arrest of Mishra upon landing. But against the victim’s wishes, the plane’s crew brought the passenger before her. He apologized and begged to be spared for the sake of his family.
“In my already distraught state, I was further disoriented by being made to confront and negotiate with the perpetrator of the horrific incident at close quarters,” she wrote in the statement to Air India’s chair, which was included in the police complaint filed by the airline.
Police in New Delhi, where the complaint was filed, said that Mishra’s home in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, was locked when officers arrived there Friday in connection with the case. They said his relatives had not been cooperating with investigators. Mishra was found and arrested in the southern state of Karnataka on Saturday.
A representative of Air India declined to comment beyond saying that the company was cooperating with law enforcement officials.
Late Friday, Wells Fargo said in a statement that the company held its employees to the highest standards of professional and personal behavior and that the person involved in the case had been fired.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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