A quarrel over smelly socks between two plane passengers escalated into a fight on arrival, which saw one of them ending up in hospital with a serious stab wound, police in Russia’s Kaliningrad Region has said.

The case dates back to last week, but details only came to light recently. It emerged that a 54-year-old resident of the Baltic Sea resort of Svetlogorsk was arrested for seriously wounding a 31-year-old Kaliningrad man, police said in a statement. The attack followed “the verbal conflict” that lasted throughout the whole flight from Moscow to Kaliningrad.

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The bone of contention was that the younger man took off his socks while the other objected to the unpleasant smell. After the plane landed in Kaliningrad’s Khrabrovo airport, the two continued their squabble in the parking lot.

According to preliminary police accounts, the Svetlogorsk man “stabbed his opponent in the chest area, causing a penetrating wound with damage to the heart.”

The victim tried to protect himself with “a wooden beam with nails, driven into it” that he had picked up from the ground. The perpetrator may face up to ten years in prison if found guilty, police said.

In early December, Indian police arrested a man who caused uproar on a bus by taking off his shoes and socks. The person, who was travelling from the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh to New Delhi, refused to put away or throw out his smelly socks and threatened the passengers, provoking a heated debate.

The driver was eventually forced to stop at a police station where the smelly socks owner was arrested “on charges of causing public nuisance,” Sanjeev Gandhi, police chief in the town of Una, told AFP. The troublemaker was released on bail the next day and filed a complaint against the other passengers and the bus crew for harassment before leaving on another bus.