After Indigo and Air India, SpiceJet suspends comedian Kunal Kamra for heckling Arnab Goswami

 After IndiGo and Air India, SpiceJet has announced action against comedian Kunal Kamra, whose video questioning Republic TV's Arnab Goswami onboard an IndiGo flight, went viral on Tuesday. "SpiceJet has decided to suspend Mr. Kunal Kamra from flying with the airline till further notice," the airline tweeted.

While IndiGo suspended Kamra from flying with it for a period of six months, Air India banned him until further notice.

Kamra allegedly heckled Goswami, the editor of Republic TV, on IndiGo's Mumbai-Lucknow (6E5317) flight on Tuesday. Kamra took to Twitter to share the video of the entire episode. In the video, the anchor can be seen trying to avoid Kamra even as the comic continues to pose him a few questions and call him a “coward” repeatedly.

“First he called me mentally unstable, then he is saying I am watching something,” Kamra is heard saying, adding, “ he [Goswami] is not ready to answer my question". “Viewers today wants to know if Arnab is a coward or a nationalist,” the comic questions the journalist, parodying the latter's own style of questioning his panelists in his popular news show.

"I am part of the tukde-tukde narrative. You should deflate me. You should take enemies of the state down. You should make sure the country is in safe hands," the comic is heard saying, even as the journalist continues to remain silent.

“Are you a coward or are you a nationalist,” the comic continues to ask him. Further, Kamra says he wanted to have a polite conversation with the journalist, but adds that Goswami does not “deserve” his politeness. "This is for Rohith Vemula's mother whose caste you were discussing on your show," the comic is heard saying. Even as he continues to taunt the journalist for more than a minute, none of the co-passengers are seen interfering.

Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor weighed in on the video and said, "The truth is that it was time someone gave him (Goswami) a taste of his own medicine". "These are the words he regularly uses to berate his innocent victims, except he does so in a hectoring, bullying manner & at higher volume & pitch than Kunal Kamra does in this video," Tharoor tweeted.

When a Twitter user alleged that Tharoor was endorsing public heckling and forced debates, he responded by saying, "On the contrary: I deplore & condemn what was done to me & therefore approve of teaching the incorrigible what it feels like to be treated that way."

"His [Goswami's] goons, armed with cameras and mics as their weapons, have done exactly the same thing to me, in almost exactly the same words, on two separate flights until asked to desist by air crew," Tharoor alleged.

-Inputs from PTI