Teen actress molestation case: ‘My husband was sleeping, he’s innocent’

NEWDELHI: The wife of the passenger, who allegedly tried to molest a Bollywood actress on board a Delhi-Mumbai Vistara flight, on Monday claimed that her husband was innocent. 

She also questioned the teen actress on maintaining silence when the alleged incident happened.

Coming to the defence of her husband, she said, “Somebody had died in her family and her husband was on his way to attend the funeral. He hadn’t slept for 24 hours and also asked the crew not to disturb as he wanted to sleep.”

Clarifying further, the wife of the arrested middle-aged man said, “His foot was on the armrest, but not with the intention to harass.”

“I don’t know why she levelled such allegations, maybe there was a misunderstanding. He is a family man and can never do such a thing. We want justice,” she maintained.

The wife’s clarification comes after the actor alleged she was molested by a co-passenger on board a Delhi-Mumbai flight.

She narrated her ordeal on Instagram via live video.

The actress said she was on an Air Vistara flight from Delhi to Mumbai when a co-passenger sitting behind her put up his feet on her armrest.

“So, I was in a flight travelling from Delhi to Mumbai today and right behind me one middle-aged man who made my two-hour journey miserable. I tried to record it on phone to understand it better because the cabin lights were dimmed, I failed to get it…”

“The lights were dimmed, so it was even worse. It continued for another five to ten minutes and then I was sure of it. He kept nudging my shoulder and continued to move his foot up and down my back and neck,” she said in the video post.

In the video, which she recorded immediately after deboarding the flight, she also broke down several times.

“This is not done, I am disturbed… Is this how you’re going to take care of girls? This is not the way anybody should be made to feel. This is terrible,” she said.

“No one will help us if we don’t decide to help ourselves. And this is the worst thing,” she added.

Meanwhile, in a statement on Twitter, the airline Vistara said it would look into the complaint, and added that it had “zero tolerance for such behaviour”.