Kolkata: A wheelchair-bound flyer had to face a harrowing time at Calcutta's Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport after she was stood up not just once but ‘thrice’ despite evident physical limitations. Taking to X, the woman named Arushi Singh narrated her ordeal. She said,"Yesterday evening during the security clearance at Kolkata airport, the officer asked me (a wheelchair user) to stand up, not once but thrice. First, she asked me to get up and walk two steps into the kiosk."

“At the kiosk, this security woman told me, khade hokar do kadam aa jaiye (Stand up and take two steps inside). I told her, 'woh nahin ho sakta (That is not possible)'. She again asked,, 'kya ho gaya (What happened?)'. I had to explain to her that I had a disability by birth,” Arushi added.

“The whole episode lasted barely a minute or two. I was exasperated and shouting while it lasted,” Arushi told The Telegraph Online on Thursday. “I had to use the supporting walls to push the wheelchair on my own to exit from the kiosk. The security personnel did not even say a sorry for her behavior and the wheelchair assistant from the airlines was busy elsewhere.”

“The security personnel at the gate tried calling the counter but there was no response. After 20 minutes, he himself wheeled me in,” she wrote on X.

Upon arriving at the security check-in point, she found herself alone with no other passengers in sight.  “I have never faced such a situation anywhere else. Usually once I tell them (about my disability at birth), the security personnel never ask again. I don’t know why this woman kept insisting.”

“Does the CISF manual on airport security ask to insult people with disability? This appalling lack of empathy has left me shaken, and furious. There have been instances in the past too and shows that Kolkata airport has learnt nothing from the past,” Arushi wrote in her last post.

The Gurugram woman who was travelling from Calcutta to Delhi said that she would take up the matter with CISF authorities.