While no case of coronavirus has been reported from Arunachal Pradesh, a traveller refused to sit near a flyer from the northeastern state recently.
It has been reported that some of the flyers have responded to the coronavirus outbreak in China “unusually”, some going to the extent of trying to avoid fellow passengers with Mongoloid features.
On Saturday, the death toll from the coronavirus epidemic in China, which shares border with Arunachal Pradesh, touched 1,500 mark.
According to reports, on Thursday night, a traveler on a Delhi-Kolkata IndiGo flight refused to sit near a flyer from Arunachal Pradesh when the latter sneezed once.
Later the flyer stood in the aisle and pressurized the cabin crew to get his seat changed.
The cabin crew after being insisted shifted him to an empty seat a few rows ahead.
A media report quoted a cabin crew member as saying: “There is some amount of stereotyping going on. It is unfortunate and we are asking flyers to be reasonable.”
An Air India commander said after being approached by the cabin crew, he had to intervene on a couple of occasions.
The report quoted the Air India commander as saying: “I had to explain that the flyer in the next seat was an Indian with no connection to China.”
A flight attendant with a private carrier said: “It is a problem when a flight is full. Such a situation may even lead to a flight being delayed.”
It has been reported that such demands from flyers increased following February 7, when a Chinese national on board a Delhi-Pune Air India flight was hospitalized.
But it was cleared that the Chinese national had not affected by novel coronavirus.
The Central government recently banned all India-bound airlines from boarding any passengers from China and cancelled all existing Indian visas.
Government decision came in the wake of rapid spread of coronavirus outbreak which originated in China’s Wuhan province.