Accused was drunk, took photo of air hostess.
By Sreekanth A Nair
A Hindu Mahasabha leader and two lawyers have been arrested on charges of harassing the crew and passengers of a Chennai-bound flight on Wednesday. The incident happened when the flight was about to take off from Coimbatore airport around 10 pm.
Subhash Swaminathan from Trichy, who is vice president of Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha’s Tamil Nadu unit, Senthel Kumar and Raja, both from Perundurai, were remanded in judicial custody for 14 days by Judicial Magistrate Rajavelu. The three were allegedly drunk.
According to reports, they entered the IndiGo flight and one of them allegedly started taking the photograph of an air hostess with his mobile phone. When the air hostess objected to the act, other passengers also raised voice against the three.
Soon the pilot entered and asked the lawyers to keep calm. They deleted the photograph when the crew requested. But they threatened the airline staff when the Indigo security managers asked them to behave.
But the argument between them and passengers continued and later the passengers threatened to get down if the trouble makers were not de-boarded.
Later, the airport authorities took up the issue and alerted the police. Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel detained the three and later police arrested them.
They were charged with Section 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), under Indian Penal Code (IPC) and under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act.
The flight was delayed by one hour because of the incident.
Reddif quoted Indigo officials saying: “Keeping in mind the convenience of passengers on board, the crew requested the IndiGo security manager to debrief the passengers to maintain decorum on board, in local language. On hearing the debrief, these passengers got verbally profane and threatened the airline staff. The security staff then escalated the matter to the CISF, who further off-loaded these passengers from the aircraft.”