On Friday in Delhi, Shankar Mishra, the man accused of peeing on an elderly female co-passenger on an Air India flight, performed a startling U-turn and asserted that he was not responsible for the repulsive crime. The assertion by the accused’s lawyer, made for the first time since the scandalous incident on an Air India flight from New York to New Delhi on November 26 of last year, contradicts the charges leveled against the accused by some other passengers and even a string of WhatsApp exchanges he had with the victim woman, which appeared to show the scandalous incident actually took place.
Shankar Mishra: elderly woman co-passenger urinated on herself : he did not commit offensive act
The accused’s attorney made the assertion before Additional Sessions Judge Harjyot Singh Bhalla in opposition to a Delhi police appeal asking for reconsideration of a ruling reached by a magistrate court denying police his custody questioning. Because it didn’t seem like the arguments presented to him had been made before the Metropolitan Magistrate, the court dismissed the motion. The police might file their application to the magistrate court once more, he said.
“I’m not the accused. There must be someone else. She seemed to have peed on herself. She suffered from a prostate condition, which appears to impact many “kathak dancers.” He didn’t perform it. The way the seats were arranged prevented anyone from getting to her place. The only way to get to her seat was from the back, and even then, the urine couldn’t get to the front of the seat. The passenger situated behind the complainant had not made any such complaint, the defence attorney informed the judge.
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Shankar Mishra’s counsel argues : interrogation required to establish the sequence of events
When speaking on behalf of Mishra, senior attorney Ramesh Gupta accused the police and the media of making light of the situation.
The first complaint was submitted by the complainant one day after the incident. What was in dispute? The airline handled that. Because of the media and police, this situation has turned into a joke. They referred to me as an evader and questioned the size of the case and whether a murder was involved. His employment was terminated, according to the defence attorney. In order to establish the timeline of events, the prosecutor sought for new custody of the prisoner and claimed Mishra needed to be questioned.
“His kin made an effort to contact the suspect. We also need to know what he consumed and how he consumed it before to getting on the plane. Why didn’t he arrive sooner and where did he hide himself? It went on to say that after using his phone for around 15 seconds, the suspect was detained from a guest accommodation, where he had not even entered his name.” We need to interview people for a long time in order to discover who was hiding him. The police told the judge they wouldn’t use the third degree. However, the court commented that whatever submission the metropolitan magistrate was making had not been answered.
“You should go back to MM for these reasons. It seems like the MM was not given the points that were offered to me. The judge decided that MM could not be held responsible for failing to address these issues if they had not been brought up before her. The court decided that even in the lack of additional facts, the application may still be filed before the magistrate.” With this, the application is abandoned. The judge indicated that the Department may resubmit these arguments to MM if it so wishes.
During the arguments, the judge had already asked the police whether the complainant had made any statements about a previous confrontation or hostility with the accused. The prosecution responded negatively. The only issue in this scenario is the amount of time between him leaving (his seat) and returning. The judge allowed you to question him while he was being held. The accusation against Mishra was that he exposed himself to the victim after urinating on her while intoxicated. In response to the woman’s allegations, Delhi police filed a FIR against him on January 4.
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