Mahua Moitra faces ‘TMC chor’ slogans on plane. What happened?

Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra has alleged mid-air harassment. The incident occurred when she was on board an IndiGo flight to Delhi on Thursday (May 7). According to Moitra, she was travelling to the national capital on official work to attend a meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence.

The TMC leader claimed that a group of male passengers shouted slogans like “chor chor, TMC chor” and “Jai Shri Ram," and filmed her inside the plane. Moitra has demanded that the airline and the Civil Aviation Minister, Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu, take immediate punitive action.

What Moitra alleged

The Krishnanagar MP was seated 1F on IndiGo flight 6E 719, when 4-6 men boarded in a group & "leered at her." According to her, when the plane landed, and before the doors opened, the group of men began chanting slogans while recording video inside the aircraft without her consent.

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In the video posted by Mahua Moitra, a group of men can be heard raising slogans such as “Jai Shri Ram” and “chor chor TMC chor" (TMC is a party of thieves).

"...I was on seat 1F on 6E 719. 4-6 men boarded in a group & leered at me & went to the back of the plane. When the flight landed & before the doors opened, this is what they did & filmed it..." she wrote on X.

Moitra then called out the harasser on X: "This is no citizen anger. This is harassment & violates my safety in an aircraft. No way that these louts can get away with this harassment inside an airplane."

In another post on X, Moitra blasted the BJP: "This is BJP culture. Why is anyone surprised? I ignored it & went to my mtng from airport. Then people forwarded me a video which the Sanghis were “viralling”. That’s when I called it out. IndiGo tells me they need a formal complaint. Which I am sending."

What are Moitra's demands?

Taking to her social media, the TMC MP tagged Civil Aviation Minister Naidu Kinjarapu, demanding that "these louts need to be identified and placed on the no-fly list."

She also urged IndiGo to trace the crew report and publicly “name and shame" the individuals involved.

"IndiGo, find your crew report, name & shame them & put on no-fly list RamMNK, please take action," Moitra said.

She also tagged senior INDIA bloc leaders, including Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav, Rahul Gandhi, and MK Stalin, in the same post, as part of a broader discussion of safety issues faced by women in public life.

IndiGo yet to respond?

While IndiGo has not yet issued an official statement identifying the passengers involved, the airline generally follows a standard protocol of conducting an internal investigation before forwarding names to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for inclusion on the no-fly list.

The incident comes amid heightened political tensions in West Bengal following the recently concluded assembly elections, in which the BJP registered a thumping victory, routing the TMC.

With inputs from agencies