Whither #PeeGate?

News cycles are short-lived, fast-spinning wheels of information. Here today, and poof gone tomorrow. Now, we are caught up in the drama of Gautam Adani’s battle with Hindenburg Research and its political tremors. So, it is hard to feel there is any other headline worth tracking.

- BARKHA DUTT

But, I draw your attention back to an issue, which though almost irrelevant in implication compared with the Adani saga, was covered with as much breathless urgency—the infamous Air India #PeeGate.

A month later, I have to cautiously wonder if Shankar Mishra was a victim of a media lynch mob. I think we still do not know the facts, for certain. I was among those who was scathing about the man, I then called, the ‘urinator’. As a feminist, it is obviously my instinct to believe women. Even now, I cannot for the life of me answer why anyone, elderly or young, would single out a fellow passenger to blame, if he had not actually done what she says he has. When the story first broke, I even said—apart from the unruliness—it seemed like a case of sexual harassment to me.

But, as time went on and I started doing deeper reporting on the story, some things stopped making sense.