Coimbatore: In an embarrassing incident at Coimbatore airport, a Hindu outfit functionary and two Erode-based lawyers were off-loaded from an IndiGo plane and arrested for allegedly harassing and taking pictures of an air-hostess on board. Subash, vice president of the state unit of the Bharat Hindu Maha Sabha, and two Erode-based lawyers M.Senthil Kumar and S.Raja were on Thursday produced before a magistrate who remanded Subhash to 14 days’ judicial custody. However, the two lawyers were granted bail.
The IndiGo flight with 130 passengers was headed for Chennai from Coimbatore on Wednesday night. The three passengers got into the flight in a drunken state. Even before the flight took off, they began to behave in an unruly manner, teased the airhostess and took her pictures on their mobile phones, an official of the IndiGo airlines said.
The airhostess informed the flight officer who asked the three passengers to delete the pictures of the airhostess. The CISF officials too entered the flight and asked them to delete the pictures. However, the three passengers stoutly refused and started abusing the flight officers.
Immediately, the CISF personnel alerted the Peelamedu police who rushed to the airport. The three passengers were off-loaded from the flight and arrested on charges of harassing the airhostess, a Peelamedu police source said. After the three were off-loaded, the flight which was scheduled to depart at 10.45 pm left after a delay of one hour.
All the three were produced before magistrate Rajavelu who granted bail to the lawyers but remanded Subhash to judicial custody. Earlier, the magistrate, on certain technicality in the case, reserved the judgment for later after objections were raised on judicial remand of the accused.
In a statement, the IndiGo said, “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. But these passengers got verbally profane and threatened the airline staff. The security staff then alerted the CISF, who further off-loaded these passengers from the aircraft.”
Regretting the inconvenience caused to other passengers, IndiGo said customer satisfaction is core to its business.
“However, untoward conduct of this nature is of serious concern to us, and as a responsible corporate citizen we will take all necessary action to address this violation,” IndiGo said.
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