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Jeeja Ghosh, the disability activist who was forced off a Goa-bound flight because she suffers from cerebral palsy, joins a long list of passengers who have faced such humiliation.
“What happened to Jeeja isn’t something new. For every Jeeja case that gets reported in the media, there are 10-15 others that don’t get reported. It is only through heavy fines and exemplary punishment that one can ensure that these incidents are not repeated in the future,” said Javed Abidi, convener of the Disability Rights Group.
The chief commissioner for persons with disability, Prasanna Pincha, took suo motu action based on news reports and today issued summons to SpiceJet seeking an explanation for Sunday’s incident at Calcutta airport.
Ghosh, 40, was forced to disembark minutes before take-off because the pilot decided she could not travel alone. The airline has since apologised but Ghosh was so traumatised she took ill.
In 2011, Kingfisher Airlines staff asked Shabnam Mansur, 35, and her two sons, aged seven and one-and-a-half years, to get off another flight to Goa, leaving them stranded at Ahmedabad airport. It was only later that the staff told the woman, whose husband is a disability activist, she could not travel with two kids because she was blind.
The Civil Aviation Requirement on Carriage of Persons with Disabilities and Persons with Reduced Mobility states that “no medical clearance or special forms shall be insisted from persons with disabilities or persons with reduced mobility who only require special assistance at the airport for assistance in embarking/ disembarking and a reasonable accommodation in flight, who otherwise do not require any additional assistance”.
Rajiv Rajan, a disability activist who helped frame the guideline after he was forced off a flight, said: “They didn’t allow me to board. They (airline officials) said I couldn’t get onto the plane without an escort and they asked me for a fit-to-fly certificate. I told them that I didn’t need an escort, yet they insisted. The certificate is only for the medically ill, not for disabled people like me. I was afraid that they were going to push my wheelchair, so I left and they called the police. This happened with me in 2007, and it’s been five years, and things haven’t changed much.”
Experts say it is always the cases of activists that are reported in the media, the plight of the common people is worse.
Rizwan, 37, who was travelling with his mother and sister, was refused a boarding ticket by IndiGo in May 2010. The airline staff told his sibling that Rizwan, who had been mentally challenged since his cerebrum was damaged when he was three days old, was a “threat to other passengers”. The family was even carrying a medical certificate.
Mithu Alur, founder chairperson of The Spastics Society of India, who is at an international conference in Goa for which Jeeja was going, said: “As soon as we came to know about the incident, I alerted NDTV, I have given many interviews to the media. There is also a panel discussion on the incident on NDTV. I have demanded that punitive action be taken against the airlines and that chief minister Mamata Banerjee should take up the issue.”
However, Abidi feels that there is need for much more than this to pressure the DGCA to take action against the airlines. “Media and public memory is very short-lived. People forget. Even Jeeja will move on. Then such incidents will happen again. There is no accountability now. If there is punitive action and the airlines are made to pay something like 1 crore to the person they have humiliated, then they will think twice before violating the guidelines. This 1 crore should then be used to raise awareness among the crew about disability,” Abidi said.
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