Though a frequent flier travelling at least 10-15 days a month, Rajiv is not the usual jet-setting flier -- he is different. He is wheel chair-bound and suffers from cerebral palsy.

Never did the 34-year-old realise that his disability will bring him face to face with the travesties of flying by domestic airlines.

On June 18, Rajiv was at the Chennai airport on his way to Delhi to attend a seminar on the invitation of the central government. He was at the airport at 5.20 am for his Air Sahara flight that was to take off at 6.35 am.

"I asked for a wheelchair as my personal wheel chair had to go as luggage. A person from the airline took my e-ticket and asked me, is anybody coming with you? I said no, I always travel alone. Then, they asked me a ridiculous and irrelevant question, 'do you have the boarding pass of the previous flight?' I said ‘no, Why should I carry it?'

"The next question was, Do you have a fit-to-fly certificate? I said, ‘why should I have it? I am not a medical patient’.

"Their concluding line was, 'We will not let you fly.'

"I showed them the invitation letter from the Government of India. I spoke to my director at Vidyasagar (earlier known as the Spastic Society of India) who tried to explain for more than half an hour but they refused to listen. While this was going on, the flight took off. How can the flight take off without a passenger who had a valid ticket? They don't even consider me a passenger. They didn't even give me the boarding pass," he laments.

When they tried to push his wheelchair out of the airport, Rajiv got out of it and sat in front of their cabin on the floor refusing to go. Soon, there appeared several policemen with automatic machine guns pointing at Rajiv! "As if I was a terrorist," Rajiv laughs now.

But he was not in a state of mind to laugh when all that happened. "Today, I can laugh at the picture of me sitting on the floor with several policemen pointing their machine guns at me! But imagine how I would have felt at that time."

A couple of policemen who were familiar with Rajiv tried to reason out with the airline but they did not budge. Rajiv came back and alerted the media. The news was splashed on all the television channels. There were protests by the disabled all over India.

Then, a representative of Jet Airways, which has taken over Air Sahara, apologised. But what happened after that was even more ridiculous. The CEO of Jet Airways took back the apology saying the incident was unfortunate but there was 'no question' of them apologising. Now, Rajiv has sought an unconditional written apology from them.

Reportage: Shobha Warrier | Photographs: Sreeram Selvaraj

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