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After heckling journalist Arnab Goswami on flight, Kunal Kamra now gets banned by SpiceJet

| @indiablooms | Jan 29, 2020, at 03:19 pm

New Delhi/IBNS: After getting banned by IndiGo and Air India for heckling journalist Arnab Goswami during a flight journey, stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra on Wednesday now received the same treatment by airline SpiceJet.

Though the Kamra had a faceoff with Goswami on an IndiGo flight, SpiceJet announced on Wednesday, "SpiceJet has decided to suspend Mr. Kunal Kamra from flying with the airline till further notice."

Reacting to the ban, Kamra issued a statement which reads, ".... I haven't even travelled SpiceJet or Air India in this event and there's no pattern here of me being unruly. This was the first time something like this has happened, so why have they jumped the gun and banned me? I have travelled SpiceJet and Air India in the past. There have been no complaints against me ever, only selfies and love has been shared by the crew."

Kamra, in the video posted on Tuesday on his Twitter handle, was seen attacking Goswami over his brand of  “journalism” and provoked him to respond holding that he is doing this for late Dalit student Rohith Vemula's mother (Rohith had committed suicide). He asked him if he is a "coward" or a "nationalist", ridiculing the media personality for his stand and aggression against certain groups like JNU students, liberals, et al. Goswami, who helms pro-government Republic TV, reportedly called him mentally unstable during the incident and kept quiet.

He even challenged Goswami, who was on his laptop sporting dark glasses, to speak out against him identifying himself as “anti-national” and one of  “tukde-tukde narrative”.

Soon after the video went viral, Indigo issued a statement saying: "In light of the recent incident on board 6E 5317 from Mumbai to Lucknow, we wish to inform that we are suspending Mr. Kunal Kamra from flying with IndiGo for a period of six months, as his conduct onboard was unacceptable behaviour."

"Hereby, we wish to advise our passengers to refrain from indulging in personal slander whilst onboard, as this can potentially compromise the safety of fellow passengers," it said.

Soon after national carrier Air India banned him from flying for a similar period of time.

Responding to IndiGo’s statement, which was tagged to him, Hardeep Singh Puri tweeted:  “Offensive behaviour designed to provoke & create disturbance inside an aircraft is absolutely unacceptable & endangers safety of air travellers. We are left with no option but to advise other airlines to impose similar restrictions on the person concerned.”

Kamra posted along the video that he did this (heckling Arnab Goswami midair) for his hero Rohit (read Rohith Vemula, the Dalit Ph.D scholar student who had committed suicide alleging discrimination against him in University of Hyderabad).

While Arnab Goswami is known for his ballistic TV journalism and attacks on "liberals", he during the midair episode kept silent.

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