A day after the Air India urination case accused Shankar Mishra claimed that the complainant urinated on herself, the latter issued a statement saying the “accused, instead of being remorseful for the utterly disgusting act committed by him, has adopted a campaign of spreading misinformation and falsities with the intent of further harassing the victim”.
The complainant said the claims made by Mishra are “completely false and concocted and by their very nature are disparaging and derogatory”.
Mishra’s lawyer’s charges have been dismissed by Kathak dancers and have enraged many exponents of classical Indian dances across the
country.
In the statement issued through her lawyer Ankur Mehindro, the complainant said, “It has been brought to our knowledge that certain scurrilous and defamatory allegations have been made on behalf of the accused during a court hearing”.
“Needless to state, the allegations are completely false and concocted and by their very nature are disparaging and derogatory. The said allegations are also in complete contradiction and a complete volte-face of the statements and the pleaded case of the accused in his Bail Application,” the statement added.
Mishra’s counsel, while arguing against a police petition seeking revision of an order passed by a magisterial court refusing his custodial interrogation, on Friday claimed that he did not commit the offence, and that she urinated on herself due to a medical condition that is found in Kathak dancers and the elderly woman being one.
The claim by his lawyer, made for the first time since the sordid event unfolded on an Air India New York-New Delhi flight on November 26 last year, flies in the face of denunciation of the accused by some of the co-passengers and even a string of WhatsApp exchanges he had with the victim woman which suggested the unsavoury incident indeed took place.
“I (Mishra) am not the accused. There must be someone else. It seems she herself urinated. She was suffering from some disease related to prostate, which several ‘kathak dancers’ seem to suffer from. It was not him. The seating system was such that no one could go to her seat. Her seat could only be approached from behind, and in any case the urine could not reach to the seat’s front area. Also, the passenger sitting behind the complainant did not make any such complaint,” senior advocate Ramesh Gupta, appearing for Mishra, told the judge.
Additional Sessions Judge Harjyot Singh Bhalla disposed of the police application saying police can approach the magisterial court with its application afresh.
The generalisation enraged many exponents of classical Indian dances, across the country. “It is an unfortunate case and one of the most bizarre reasons I have heard that 80 per cent of Kathak dancers have such problems,” said Kathak exponent Padma Shri Shovana Narayan.
Rashmi Vaidialingam, a lawyer and a Kuchipudi dancer, said, “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard.”