"Woman herself peed on her seat, I didn't": Shankar Mishra to court

New Delhi: In a surprise U-turn, Shankar Mishra, the man accused of urinating on an elderly woman co-passenger on an Air India flight, told a Delhi court on Friday he did not commit the offensive act.

The claim by his lawyer, made for the first time since the sordid event unfolded on an Air India New York-New Delhi flight on November 26 last year, flies in the face of denunciation of the accused by some of the co-passengers and even a string of WhatsApp exchanges he had with the victim woman which suggested the unsavoury incident indeed took place.

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“I'm not the accused. There must be someone else. She herself urinated. She was suffering from some disease related to the prostate. It was not him. The seating system was such that no one could go to her seat.

"Her seat could only be approached from behind, and in any case, the urine could not reach to seat's front area. Also, the passenger sitting behind the complainant did not make any such complaint,” the defence advocate told the court.

The judge was hearing Delhi police's plea seeking custodial interrogation of the accused.