Stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra has sent a legal notice to IndiGo demanding an unconditional apology, four days after the airline banned him for six months following an onboard incident with television anchor Arnab Goswami.
Kamra also demanded that the airline revoke the ban and pay him Rs 25 lakh as compensation.
In the notice sent on Friday, the comedian’s lawyer said his client had suffered “mental pain and agony” because of the airline’s “illegal, arbitrary and high-handed decision”. Kamra has given IndiGo a week to respond.
A statement from IndiGo on Saturday said: “The company will duly respond to any legal notice that it receives in relation to this matter.”
IndiGo had suspended Kamra hours after Tuesday’s incident when the comedian is alleged to have heckled the Republic TV editor on a Mumbai-Lucknow flight.
In the legal notice sent to IndiGo CEO Ronojoy Dutta, lawyer Prashant Sivarajan said Goswami had neither made any complaint nor requested the intervention of the cabin crew during the flight.
Sivarajan also said the flight’s pilot-in-command had not made any complaint against Kamra. Sivarajan asked IndiGo to “revoke the suspension” with immediate effect and to “tender unconditional apology towards my client in all leading newspapers as well as electronic media and on all of the social media platforms currently being operated by you”.
