Shankar Mishra, the former Wells Fargo executive fired by the bank after he urinated on an elderly woman while intoxicated during an Air India flight in late November, was arrested in New Delhi, according to Indian media reports.
Mishra, a resident of Mumbai, was sought by police for days. In an apparent attempt to evade authorities, he switched off his phone on Jan. 3 and was using auto rickshaws to get around, Hindustan Times reported.
Law enforcement officials were finally able to track him down at 3:30 am local time on Saturday after he made a credit card purchase in Bangalore and gave away his location.
Mishra, who was canned from his corporate executive job by Wells Fargo as a result of the incident, was hauled before a judge in New Delhi on Saturday, where he was remanded to 14-day judicial custody. Police had requested that Mishra be placed in their custody, but their request was denied.
He faces charges of committing an obscene act in a public place; assault or criminal force to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty; and misconduct in public by a drunken person.
Earlier this week, an Indian newspaper revealed the contents of a complaint made by the 72-year-old victim to an executive at Air India.
The woman alleged in her complaint that during a Nov. 26 flight from New York to New Delhi, a “male business class passenger … walked to my seat, completely inebriated.”
“He unzipped his pants and urinated on me and kept standing there until the person sitting next to me tapped him and told him to go back to his seat, at which point he staggered back to his seat,” the woman wrote.
After her clothes were soaked in urine, she was offered “airline pajamas and socks.” She then changed out of her urine-tainted clothes during a trip to the bathroom.
She criticized the way in which Air India staff handled her complaint. She wrote that they refused her request to switch seats, even though there was an open spot available in first class.
The woman wrote in her complaint letter to the airline that she was then offered a “small crew seat used by the airline staff, where I sat for about two hours.”
To her horror, she wrote that airline crew had asked her to return to the urine-soaked seat, which by this time was covered with a sheet, but she refused.
“I was then given the steward seat for the rest of the journey,” she wrote.
The woman was also outraged that airline staff ignored her request to not see the man who peed on her.
But the man had sobered up by then and approached her, breaking down in tears and apologizing. He then begged her not to file a complaint so as to spare his family, she wrote.
“In my already distraught state, I was further disoriented by being made to confront and negotiate with the perpetrator of the horrific incident in close quarters,” she wrote.
“I told him that his actions were inexcusable, but in the face of his pleading and begging in front of me, and my own shock and trauma, I found it difficult to insist on his arrest or to press charges against him.”
The woman blasted the airline for initially refusing to reimburse her ticket. She wrote that airline staff also refused her request to have the carrier foot the bill for cleaning her pee-stained clothing.
It was only after the woman’s son-in-law sent to a complaint to Air India on the day after she landed that they agreed to reimburse the ticket. The airline said it issued a full refund weeks later.
Campbell Wilson, the CEO of Air India’s parent company, Tata Group, issued a statement apologizing for the airline’s conduct and announcing that the company had laid off the pilot and four crew members involved in the incident.
“Internal investigations into whether there were lapses by other staff are ongoing on aspects including the service of alcohol on flight, incident handling, complaint registration on board and grievance handling,” Wilson said in a statement.
“As a responsible airline brand, we have initiated the following steps with a view to materially strengthen and improve how such incidents would be addressed in future.”
Last year, a 33-year-old California man was charged in federal court after allegedly asking a Southwest Airlines flight attendant if she’d like to see his penis before urinating on the cabin floor.
In June, a TikTok user posted video of a drunken man who was hauled off a plane by Greek police for allegedly urinating on his brother and provoking a mid-flight fistfight.
