Several serving and retired pilots have criticised Air India for de-rostering a pilot and the crew of the November 26 flight on which a male flier urinated on an elderly woman passenger, alleging the airline was making scapegoats of the five.

However, a US-based doctor who was seated next to the accused blamed the crew saying they had shown no compassion to the woman, making her wait for a new seat and forcing her to talk to the accused.

Air India CEO Campbell Wilson had on Saturday apologised for the incident and said four cabin crew members and a pilot had been de-rostered. His statement didn’t specify any reason but suggested the airline had been aware of the incident a day after it took place, former and serving pilots emphasised.

Air India sources confirmed that after the flight from New York landed in Delhi, the cabin crew filled in a detailed report on what had happened, and this was counter-signed by the captain.

“According to the laiddown procedure, after every flight, the cabin crew in charge fills out a report of what happened in the cabin during the flight. It is read and counter-signed by the captain,” S.S. Panesar, ex-pilot and former director of flight safety and training with the erstwhile Indian Airlines, said.

“If the cabin crew department and Air India did not read or react promptly to the report, how can they blame the captain now? De-rostering and giving the captain a showcause notice is absolutely unfair and ridiculous.”

Panesar added: “Officers such as director, inflight services, and other higher-ups in the organisation who sat on the report or tried to broker a deal between the accused and the victim should be punished, rather.”

The pilot fraternity has rallied behind the crew and the captain as it believes that if any action was needed against them, it should have been taken immediately after the incident.

“The management was made aware of the incident by the crew via a written report on landing. The management could have asked for more details if the report was not clear. Instead, the airline tried to bury the issue by negotiating with the passenger concerned,” Captain Ajay Ahlawat, an air force veteran, said.

Ahlawat, currently chief of flight safety with a non-scheduled operator, said: “When the matter was reported in the media and sensing negative press, the airline has now tried to blame the crew instead of accepting it themselves. It’s like a pendulum that swung from inaction to overreaction.... Blaming the pilots for the inaction of the airline is professional lynching.”

The US-based doctor, Sugata Bhattacharjee, alleged the crew had made the woman go back to her soiled business class seat despite four seats in the first class being vacant, and also forced her to talk to accused Shankar Mishra who begged her not to lodge a complaint.

This was a “no-no because indecent exposure is a crime”, Bhattacharjee said. “It’s asexual assault. And once that happens, nobody should take a mediation route.”

Mishra is accused of rising from his business class seat, walking over to the woman’s seat, unzipping his trousers and urinating on her.

Bhattacharjee said that when he asked why the woman passenger was not being given an available first-class seat, the senior flight attendant said the pilot in command alone could take that call. “And that call was not made. So this is a failure,” the doctor said.

It was only after the crew rest was over that the woman was given a fresh seat that became available, he said.

“I was angry. I don’t care about what a drunk man did because he’s not in his senses,” Bhattacharjee said. “But people who had the power and the authority, they showed no compassion. In a plane, the pilot is the chief person and the buck stops with him.”

Bhattacharjee, who lives in New Hampshire state, had written an elaborate complaint to Air India immediately after the flight landed. He told PTI he was speakingout now to elaborate on the complaint from a “moral obligation” because of claims by Mishra’s father that his son was innocent and may have been a victim of extortion.

He said that Mishra had had four stiff drinks through lunch. He said he had alerted a male crew member about Mishrahaving had one too many and asked him to keep an eye on the passenger.

Bhattacharjee said the captain should have alerted ground staff before landing and ensured that Mishra was handed over to the authorities.

“My anger was that nobody stood up to the responsibility and there were multiple failures in the procedural part,” Bhattacharjee said.

He described the elderly woman as soft-spoken and said she was almost in tears after the incident. “She was very quiet, she’s a very, very decent lady.”

Bhattacharjee said he had asked for a complaint book but was handed over two pieces of white paper on which he wrote his complaint. He said that two young crew members working in the economy class wore gloves and helped clean the mess.

“I still feel Air India has one of the best connectivity and one bad apple should not tarnish the name of such a big organisation. And people should do their job. That’s it,” he added.