Bollywood actor turned reality TV judge Shilpa Shetty Kundra alleged that she was targeted by an airline official at the Sydney airport for being “brown.”
Shilpa, who was earlier the target of racism in 2007 when she was a contestant on the fifth season of the British reality show Celebrity Big Brother, took to Instagram to share her experience of being harassed by an official of Australian airline Qantas over a cabin luggage, which was deemed as ‘oversized’ at the check-in counter.
“At the check-in counter, met a grumpy Mel (that’s her name) who decided it was ‘okay’ to speak curtly to ‘us’ (brown people!) travelling together. I was flying business and had 2 bags (my allowance) and she insisted and decided my half empty duffel bag was oversized (to check-in), so she sent us to check it in at the other counter dealing with ‘oversized luggage’,” Shilpa wrote.
She continued, “There a polite lady (yes this one was) said, ‘This is not an oversized bag, please check this in manually if you can at another counter’ (all this happening while the counter is going to shut in five minutes).
“As the manual check-in wasn’t going through for five minutes (we tried), I went upto Mel and requested her to put the bag through as her colleague said it wasn’t an oversized bag. She refused again… Just being adamant especially when I told her this is causing a lot of inconvenience.”
Detailing further on her ordeal, Shetty wrote, “We had no time to waste so we ran to the oversized baggage counter and requested her to put the bag through which she did after I told her that rude Mel had issues! To which another colleague joined in and reiterated my duffle wasn’t oversized and could’ve easily been checked in.”
Shilpa concluded saying that the point of the post was for “Quantas Airlines to know and take cognisance that their staff must be taught to be helpful and tone can’t change with preference to colour.”
“We are not pushovers and they must know that being callous and rude will not be tolerated.”
The long caption was accompanied with a picture of Shilpa with her bag. However, Shilpa did not specifically mention where Mel harassed her for her skin colour.