On a Mumbai-bound Air India flight, content creator Mahi Khan alleged that he was harassed by a fellow passenger aboard Air India flight AI676 from Kolkata to Mumbai for not speaking Marathi.
The Mumbai native said in his Instagram video that he faced linguistic intolerance when he tried to recline his seat slightly. This stir caused the bottle of the woman sitting behind him to slip from its holder and fall to the floor.
Mahi recorded part of the altercation where a woman wearing a shirt with a Hyundai logo can be heard shouting, “You are going to Mumbai, you should know Marathi,” to which Khan replied that he did not speak the language. She snapped back, “No English.”
The woman then allegedly threatened him, saying, “Mumbai utariye aapko badtameezi dikhati hu (When you get off in Mumbai, I’ll show you what misbehaviour is).”
Mahi urged Air Indian to intervene in this
Mahi then questioned on camera, “What kind of misbehaviour is this? She is telling me to speak Marathi. What is this? Air India mein ye badtameezi ho rhi hai, and aise log travel kar rahe hai. What kind of mentality is this?”
“Speak Marathi or leave Mumbai. That’s what this lady told me on my Air India flight AI676 today, before threatening me for saying ‘I don’t understand Marathi.’ Yes, this happened in 2025, in a country that proudly says, ‘Unity in Diversity,’” Mahi added.
“She was sitting in seat 16A and started shouting that I must speak in Marathi because I’m flying to Mumbai. You cannot force someone to speak a language. You cannot bully someone out of respect.”
Urging the airline to intervene, Mahi appealed to Air India to take strict action: “No passenger should feel unsafe or humiliated for simply speaking a different language.”
Notably, earlier this year, a similar altercation took place on a Mumbai local train, where a woman was caught on camera telling another commuter, “If you want to stay in our Mumbai, speak Marathi; otherwise, get out.”
Across India, there have been several reported cases of people being harassed or attacked for not speaking the local language. Like, just last month, migrant workers from Bengal have even been beaten up or mistaken for Bangladeshis simply for speaking Bengali.
