NEW DELHI: Air India said it was investigating how a lizard ended up in one of its in-flight meals, in the latest embarrassment to hit the struggling airline.
A picture circulating on social media showed the reptile’s head poking out from underneath a bun on a meal tray wrapped in cling film.
The incident happened on a flight from Delhi to London on Thursday, an airline official said.
It was not immediately clear if the animal was dead or alive.
“We are investigating how it got in the meal. We are enquiring the caterer and our in-house departments,” Praveen Bhatnagar, an Air India spokesman, said.
The state-run carrier, which has not reported an annual profit since 2007, has been hit by a string of technical glitches and other embarrassing incidents, including staff turning up late for flights.
In April, the airline made headlines when it had to ground two of its pilots after a fight erupted between the pair just before takeoff.
Air India red faced over lizard in in-flight meal
Air India red faced over lizard in in-flight meal
UN experts condemn US move to strip migrant children of legal aid
- Trump’s immigration crackdown, including an effort to deport hundreds of thousands of migrant children who entered the US without their parents
WASHINGTON: UN human rights experts on Tuesday denounced the Trump administration’s decision last year to cut legal aid for unaccompanied children in US immigration proceedings. The condemnation came days after UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk urged the Trump administration to ensure that its migration policies respect individual rights and international law.
“Denying children their rights to legal representation and forcing them to navigate complex immigration proceedings without legal counsel is a serious violation of the rights of children,” said the independent experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council.
The White House dismissed the experts and said it had made attempts to locate children it says were smuggled into the United States under the previous administration, without elaborating with specific examples.
“No one takes the UN seriously because of their extreme bias and selective outrage – they should be praising the Administration for protecting children, not lying about our policies,” Abigail Jackson, a spokeswoman for the White House, said.
In February, the US Department of the Interior ordered legal service providers working with the children to stop work and cut their funding. The providers sued over the move and a federal judge later temporarily restored the funding for the program. The cuts came amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, including an effort to deport hundreds of thousands of migrant children who entered the US without their parents.
The UN experts called the deportations unlawful and said they breached international human rights law prohibiting the removal of vulnerable groups, including children at risk of human trafficking. They also condemned the administration’s $2,500 offer to get the unaccompanied children to voluntarily leave the US
“Child-sensitive justice procedures should be guaranteed in all immigration and asylum proceedings affecting children,” said the experts, who have been in contact with the US government on the issue.
More than 600,000 migrant children have crossed the US-Mexico border without a parent or legal guardian since 2019, according to government data.
