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In a letter to the Minister of Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju on Wednesday, the President of IndiGo Aditya Ghosh wrote:
He said the airline had immediately suspended the employees and conducted a detailed investigation into the incident, adding that it should have been avoided by improving their communication with the customer.
On Wednesday evening, Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said:
Earlier in the day, Raju summoned IndiGo staff and the passenger who was involved in an altercation at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi on 15 October. Raju condemned the incident and said that strict action will be taken. He has also asked aviation regulator DGCA for an independent report on the incident.
He said, (we) “can't go into who is right & who is wrong at this stage. Any violation has to be looked into. These kind of barbarous things shouldn't be allowed.”
The airline passenger, Rajeev Katiyal, who arrived from Chennai, was waiting for the bus inside the airport when the incident happened. A compromise was reached between the two sides, police said on Tuesday.
Though police said they had received a call about an altercation, recorded footage run on news channels showed Katiyal and a few officials shoving each other over a bus ride inside the airport on 15 October.
The airline later apologised to Katiyal and said strict action has been taken against the erring employee.
IndiGo President also said that action was taken against the staff, without specifying what measure was taken.
Sinha, on Tuesday, said that a detailed report has been sought from the airlines regarding the incident.
A few hours after the news made headlines on Tuesday, Montu Kalra, an IndiGO ground staff who was said to have shot the video, was sacked, according to several TV media reports.
Former Air India CMD Ashwani Lohani, who now heads the Railway Board, hit out at the airline, calling the incident "disgusting" and "inhuman".
Talking about the staff member getting sacked, Lohani said: "The subsequent action of the airline in sacking the whistleblower is the icing on the cake of gross misconduct."
The airline, however, claimed that the “whistleblower” was the man who “instigated” the altercation.
“The ex-employee who is claiming to be the whistleblower is the one who was screaming at the customer and shouting ‘Roklay Roklay Isay’ preventing the customer from boarding the bus. He was four years senior to the other two employees. And instead of acting maturely, he is the one who instigated the incident,” IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh told Business Standard.
Apart from Lohani, many on Twitter lashed out at the airline for allegedly sacking Montu Kalra.
(With inputs from IANS.)
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