3 ‘harass’ airhostess on IndiGo flight, arrested

In an embarrassing incident at the 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. Subhash, 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 Wednesday night. The three passengers got on the flight in a drunken state. Even before the flight took off, they began behaving 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.

The CISF personnel alerted the Peelamedu police who rushed to the airport. The passengers were off-loaded from the flight and arrested on charges of harassing the airhostess. The flight was delayed by one hour. They were produced before a magistrate, who granted bail to the lawyers but remanded Subhash to judicial custody.