●●A Boston doctor was arrested this week and accused of masturbating on a plane in front of a teen.
●●Prosecutors claimed he masturbated in front of the 14-year-old girl on a May 2022 flight.
●●The girl moved seats during the flight, and told her grandmother after the plane landed, prosecutors said.
A Boston doctor was accused of exposing himself and masturbating in front of a teenager on a May 2022 flight from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Boston, Massachusetts.
According to the Department of Justice, Dr. Sudipta Mohanty was arrested on Thursday, and charged with one count of lewd, indecent, and obscene acts. His arrest follows an increase in disturbing passenger incidents since travel resumed post-pandemic.
Prosecutors alleged that on a flight last year, Mohanty masturbated while seated next to a 14-year-old, and later exposed himself.
An attorney for Mohanty did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
According to a criminal complaint, the teenager was seated next to Mohanty and his partner, and noticed that Mohanty’s “leg was bouncing up and down” after he had covered himself with his blanket.
The teenager went to use the restroom and when she returned, Mohanty used the restroom afterwards.
He later started masturbating again when they were both seated, without a blanket, until the teenager witnessed him ejaculate on himself, prosecutors alleged in the complaint. Mohanty then went back to the bathroom a second time, per the complaint.
“When Mohanty returned to his seat [the teenager] did not know what to do,” prosecutors said in the complaint. “Everyone around her was asleep.”
The teenager eventually moved to the row behind her as there were no seats next to her grandmother, the complaint read.
“Once off the plane and in the airport in Boston, [the teenager] told her grandmother that the man sitting next to her had done something ‘inappropriate,'” prosecutors said in the complaint.
“What Dr. Mohanty is accused of doing in front of a fourteen-year-old girl is reprehensible,” Christopher DiMenna, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division, said in a DOJ press release. “Today’s arrest should make it crystal clear that the FBI takes crimes aboard aircraft seriously, everything from sexual misconduct as alleged in this case, to assault, interfering with the flight crew, and theft.”
Investigators said in the complaint that they interviewed the teenager, and the family members she traveled with and saw days after the incident. Mohanty was approached by federal agents in May 2023, and denied the ordeal.
“I have no recollection of that,” Mohanty told prosecutors, per the complaint.
