MUMBAI: Indian police have filed a sexual assault case against an airline passenger after a 17-year-old Bollywood actress said the male passenger had molested her during a late New Delhi-Mumbai flight, police said on Monday.
Zaira Wasim was seen sobbing in a video she posted to her Instagram site after getting off a Vistara flight during which, she has alleged, the passenger sitting on the seat behind her attacked her.
“He kept nudging my shoulder and continued to move his foot up and down my back and neck,” Wasim said in the post. “Is this how we are going to take care of girls?”
The video sparked outrage on social media, where fans came out in support of the actress, who shot to fame through her role as a child wrestler in the 2016 blockbuster Bollywood drama “Dangal.”
Police have registered a case against a man identified as Vikas Sachdeva, under Section 354 — for assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty — and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, a Mumbai police control room official said.
“We are investigating fully and will support Zaira in every way required,” said Vistara chief strategy and commercial officer Sanjiv Kapoor.
“We have zero tolerance for this kind of thing.”
Neither Sachdeva or his lawyers could be reached for comment.
Local media reported his wife, Divya Sachdeva, saying her husband was innocent and that he was returning from a funeral and had been asleep on the flight. She accused Wasim of having made the allegations for publicity.
A spokeswoman for the airline said it had provided details to the police and aviation authorities and its senior management had flown to Mumbai to assist Wasim in the investigation. “We are deeply concerned and regret the unfortunate experience Ms. Zaira Wasim had onboard our flight last night.”
Case filed against Indian man for ‘molesting’ Bollywood actress
Case filed against Indian man for ‘molesting’ Bollywood actress
NASA and families of fallen astronauts mark 40th anniversary of space shuttle Challenger accident
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: Families of the astronauts lost in the space shuttle Challenger accident gathered back at the launch site Thursday to mark that tragic day 40 years ago.
All seven on board were killed when Challenger broke apart following liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986.
At the Kennedy Space Center memorial ceremony, Challenger pilot Michael Smith’s daughter, Alison Smith Balch, said through tears that her life forever changed that frigid morning, as did many other lives. “In that sense,” she told the hundreds of mourners, “we are all part of this story.”
“Every day I miss Mike,” added his widow, Jane Smith-Holcott, “every day’s the same.”
The bitter cold weakened the O-ring seals in Challenger’s right solid rocket booster, causing the shuttle to rupture 73 seconds after liftoff. A dysfunctional culture at NASA contributed to that disaster and, 17 years later, shuttle Columbia’s.
Kennedy Space Center’s deputy director Kelvin Manning said those humble and painful lessons require constant vigilance “now more than ever” with rockets soaring almost every day and the next astronaut moonshot just weeks away.
Challenger’s crew included schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, who was selected from thousands of applicants representing every state. Two of her fellow teacher-in-space contenders — both retired now — attended the memorial.
“We were so close together,” said Bob Veilleux, a retired astronomy high school teacher from New Hampshire, McAuliffe’s home state.
Bob Foerster, a sixth grade math and science teacher from Indiana who was among the top 10 finalists, said he’s grateful that space education blossomed after the accident and that it didn’t just leave Challenger’s final crew as “martyrs.”
“It was a hard reality,” Foerster noted at the Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy’s visitor complex.
Twenty-five names are carved into the black mirror-finished granite: the Challenger seven, the seven who perished in the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1, 2003, the three killed in the Apollo 1 fire on Jan. 27, 1967, and all those lost in plane and other on-the-job accidents.
Relatives of the fallen Columbia and Apollo crews also attended NASA’s Day of Remembrance, held each year on the fourth Thursday of January. The space agency also held ceremonies at Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery and Houston’s Johnson Space Center.
“You always wonder what they could have accomplished” had they lived longer, Lowell Grissom, brother of Apollo 1 commander Gus Grissom, said at Kennedy. “There was a lot of talent there.”
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