Mumbai: The Mumbai Police arrested a 62-year-old drunk Swedish national for allegedly molesting a 24-year-old cabin crew on board an Indigo Airlines flight from Bangkok to Mumbai. The passenger, identified as Klas Erik Harald Jonas Westberg, also reportedly assaulted a co-passenger and created a ruckus mid-air on the 6E-1052 Indigo Flight.
The passenger reportedly started behaving unruly when the flight attendant informed him that there was no food on board. The accused agreed to take a chicken dish and when the air hostess approached him with the POS machine to make the payment, on the pretext of swiping the card, he held the air hostess’s hand inappropriately.
When the air hostess protested, Westberg stood up from the seat and molested the Indigo staff in front of other passengers, the woman told the Mumbai Police.
The air hostess accused that the man later abused the staff and other passengers.
The accused was arrested on arrival at the Mumbai Airport on Thursday. He was produced before the Andheri Metropolitan Magistrate Court and was granted bail.
This was the eighth unruly flyer arrest in India in the last three months and the fifth incident of molestation onboard registered between 2017 and 2023.
On Sunday, a drunk male vomited in the aisle and defecated around the toilet on an IndiGo Guwahati-Delhi flight. The incident was flagged on Twitter by Bhaskar Dev Konwar, whose bio identifies him as a ‘senior counsel practicing at the Gauhati High Court’, who himself drew flak for hailing the shocking event as an example of ‘girl power’.
The crew member can be seen in a face mask and cleaning the vomit-covered aisle (which has been covered with paper napkins) with a disinfectant spray. The image also shows other passengers sitting passively and staring at her while she carries out the unpleasant task.
On March 22, passengers John George D’Souza and Dattatreya Anand Bapardekar started drinking after the flight took off from Dubai on an Indigo flight from Dubai to Mumbai. When the cabin crew found this, they informed them about the ban on drinking alcohol inside the flight. But both the accused got infuriated and stood up from their seat and started walking inside the flight drunk.
“Two Indigo flyers have been booked under section 336 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) & sections 21,22 and 25 of Aircraft rules for being drunk & misbehaving with the crew. Both were arrested formally but as the sections were bailable, they were granted bail from the police station itself”, DCP Dixit Gedam, Mumbai Police said.
