Security Protocol: IndiGo on Kashmiri Family Stopped From Boarding

The family was stopped at the Delhi airport allegedly because their names did not match on the ticket & their id.

Indigo Airlines’ ground staff stand next to an aircraft. (Photo: Reuters)

IndiGo Airlines has come into controversy after it stopped a Kashmiri family from boarding a flight to Srinagar at the Delhi Airport on 24 February allegedly due to a mix up in the names on the tickets and their identification documents.

According to the copies of the tickets and the documents accessed by The Quint, the daughter’s middle name was missing in the ticket and the mother’s last name on her Aadhaar card says “Bano” but on the ticket she has her husband’s last name, “Banday”.

While an eyewitness, Mir Saqib, and former JNU student leader Shehla Rashid, alleged that the family was harassed for a small discrepancy because they were Kashmiris, the airline, in a statement, clarified, “As per Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (Avsec Circular 15/2017) ,the name on the ticket has to match with the name on the Govt. ID card. We do have provisions for name rectification but this was a case of name change. As per process, the ticket had to be cancelled and a fresh ticket needed to be booked. The option was declined by the passenger. As a gesture, we had still waived the cancellation charges and refunded them in full.”

Saqib, in his Facebook post, claims that when he had tried to argue on behalf of the family, his mother and he were also offloaded from the flight and only after protests by 15 other Kashmiris, a CISF personnel SS Upadhyay intervened to calm down the situation and assured that the Kashmiri family too will be able to board the flight soon.

The family told The Quint that they were issued boarding passes which were taken away from them by the IndiGo staff. The family has reached Jammu on Monday, 25 February, by train.