Video of an incident where the staff of IndiGo flights manhandled a passenger, shot three weeks ago, has gone viral on social media and caused massive outrage. The airlines has terminated the employees in question and apologised.
The video shows a man, identified as Rajeev Katyal, being dragged and thrashed by the employees of IndiGo Airlines. It appears that a scuffle between Katyal and the ground staff began after they objected to him taking shade under a plane’s wing while waiting for the carrier bus. It further appears that the man had responded with a ‘fuck off’ to which the ground staff took offense.
But their reaction is, least to say, shocking. First, the staff tells the passenger to “abuse according to his age” and then they bar him from boarding the bus, and proceed to push and even throttle Katyal.
Watch the video here:
As per a report in The Times of India, the incident happened on on October 15 when 6E 487 flew into Delhi from Chennai. What’s strange is that an IndiGo employee, Montu Kalra, who shot the video and acted as a whistleblower, was sacked by the airline instead of acting on the staff that manhandled the passenger.
Union civil aviation minister Jayant Sinha condemned the deplorable behaviour by IndiGo crew in a series of tweets:
IndiGo also issued a statement undersigned by Aditya Ghosh, President and Whole Time Director that read: “Treating our customers with respect is core to what we do. Every day we take tens of thousands of happy customers to where they need to get to. It is for this reason that customers choose IndiGo more number of times than any other airline in the country. An incident happened in Delhi airport which is entirely the opposite of this and against what we stand for at IndiGo. The video of this incident came to our attention and we took action.
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