A Massachusetts Grand Jury has indicted a Boston physician on suspicion of masturbating in front of a 14-year-old girl during a Hawaiian Airlines flight from Honolulu in May 2022.
Dr. Sudipta Mohanty, 33, was arrested last month and has now been indicted on one count of lewd, indecent and obscene acts while in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States.
If found guilty at trial, Dr Mohanty faces a maximum sentence of 90 days imprisonment, along with a fine of up to $5,000 years and one year of supervised release.
Prosecutors allege that Dr. Mohanty started to openly masturbate in front of the teenage victim whom he was sat next to while onboard the Hawaiian Airlines flight to Boston.
The incident started around halfway through the flight when Dr. Mohanty covered himself with a blanket up to his neck. The victim noticed Dr. Mohanty’s leg bouncing up and down, and after a little while, the blanket had fallen to the ground, and he could be seen masturbating.
During this entire time, Dr. Mohanty was sat next to a female companion.
The indictment comes just weeks after another Hawaiian Airlines passenger was arrested on suspicion of groping a married father during a flight from New York JFK to Honolulu in July.
In August, federal prosecutors issued an urgent warning over a ‘disturbing’ rise in inflight sexual assaults, with the number of cases likely to be reported this year expected to surpass the number of cases reported to the FBI in 2022.
In 2017, the FBI investigated just 27 sexual misconduct cases aboard aircraft, but after a pandemic-induced dip, the number of reported cases ballooned to an alarming 90 last year.
That number is expected to be dwarfed by the number of cases set to be reported in 2023.
