Wells Fargo said it fired a company vice president who was accused by a woman of deliberately urinating on herself during an Air India flight from New York to Delhi in November.
The woman asked Air India to arrest the executive when the plane landed, Fortune reported. But instead, the company banned him from flying the airline for a month, apparently as an alternative punishment.
The woman later filed a complaint and called the man “completely drunk.”
Lawyers for the executive said the woman had “accepted” the business class meeting action and that their client had arranged for the woman’s clothes and belongings to be “cleaned”, according to media reports in India.
Indian police arrested the “urinator” on Saturday after he was “on the run,” according to New Delhi TV. He reportedly faces possible charges under Indian law of obscenity, sexual harassment and insulting the modesty of a woman. NDTV reported that a Delhi court imposed 14 days of judicial custody.
Several media reports and the Delhi Police identified the man as Shankar Mishra.
The woman complained that Air India even refused to move her to a seat away from executive and only offered to spray her belongings with disinfectant.
She said that when airline staff brought the man to her to apologize, which she did not want to do, “he started crying and apologizing profusely, begging me not to press charges against him,” NDTV reported.
India’s aviation regulator accused Air India earlier this week of being “unprofessional” and “lacking empathy” in its handling of the accident, Fortune reported on Friday.
Wells Fargo said in a statement on Friday that it had fired the executive, who was working at its Indian branch.
“Wells Fargo holds employees to the highest standards of professional and personal conduct, and we find these allegations deeply disturbing,” according to the statement. “This individual has been terminated from Wells Fargo. We are cooperating with law enforcement” regarding the incident, he added.
In a statement to Fortune, Air India said it “recognized that it could have handled these issues better, both in the air and on the ground.”
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