Shankar Mishra, accused in Air India peeing incident, gets bail

A Delhi court on Tuesday granted bail to Shankar Mishra, accused of urinating on a woman co-passenger on an Air India flight from New York to Delhi.

Additional sessions judge Harjyot Singh Bhalla granted the relief on a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh and one surety of the like amount.

Mishra was arrested from Bengaluru on January 6 and sent to judicial custody by a court in Delhi on January 7.

He had allegedly urinated on the 70-year-old woman co-passenger while in an intoxicated condition in the business class of the Air India flight on November 26 last year.

The judge was hearing an appeal filed by Mishra against an order of a magisterial court that had denied him bail.

During the hearing on the application on Monday, the judge observed that the witnesses named by Delhi police in the case were not deposing in the prosecution's favour.

"The witnesses you (investigation agency) have named are not deposing in your favour... There is a contradiction in the complainant's statement and Ila Benarjee's (witness and another co-passenger) statement," the judge noted.

Opposing the bail application, police said, "India has been defamed internationally because of the incident." Replying to this, the judge said, "It may be disgusting but that is another matter, let's not get into that. Let's go into how the law deals with it."

Asked by the judge how the accused came to know about the FIR in the case, the prosecution said it was "through the media".

The judge further asked the prosecution how the media knew about the FIR.

"It was everywhere," the prosecution told the court.

Seeking relief, Mishra had submitted that initially the bail had been declined by a magisterial court because the investigation was pending.

"Now that's done and they have examined other crew members and witnesses. Also, they asked for reimbursement of the ticket and sought no action against me," said senior advocate Ramesh Gupta, appearing for the accused.

He added that all the alleged offences against Mishra were bailable.

The judge had reserved his order on Mishra's appeal on Monday.

A magisterial court had on January 11 denied bail to Mishra, saying his act was "utterly disgusting and repulsive, shocked the civic consciousness and needed to be deprecated".