Bhubaneswar: With his head in his hands, he sits on a plane while a young woman accuses him of groping her. "I'm taking your video, Mister," she says, using her cellphone to film him staring away from her. "Now you're feeling very ashamed. I will call security," she declares. When he mutters that he is sorry, she responds, her anger clear, "No, I am sorry, I am a girl, please forgive me that I was brave enough to travel alone."
After the Indigo flight from Mumbai landed in Bhubaneshwar, the 60-year-old entrepreneur, Ravindra Jhunjhunwala, was briefly arrested and then released on bail.
"He inserted his hand through the gap in the seats and tried to inappropriately touch her body with the motive of sexual gratification," said RP Sharma, the police commissioner of Bhubaneshwar. He added that the same man is wanted in a criminal case in Rourkela.
The woman, a 32-year-old from Jharkhand, filed a police complaint against the alleged molester who she travelled with on January 27. She used her phone to film Mr Jhunjhunwaala twice - once before he disembarked from the flight, and another at the airport. Both videos went viral after being posted on YouTube. In the second, when confronted, Mr Jhunjhunwala says, "Everybody makes mistakes. I made a mistake, a big mistake." He is smiling awkwardly. Then he says, "I am a father of a girl."
Nowhere in the videos uploaded is the man seen denying that he molested the woman.