AN airline passenger has been left traumatised after finding a cockroach in his on-board meal.

According to The Sun, Rahul Raghuvanshi said he was flying with Air India from Hyderabad to Chicago via New Delhi when he made the disgusting discovery.

Rahul said he happily tucked into his meal on the long-haul flight.

But after eating nearly all of it, the journalist and engineer claimed he found the creature curled up dead under the last bite.

The alleged find added insult to injury as Rahul is a vegetarian, and was eating a veggie meal.

After finding the stomach-churning surprise, Rahul tweeted a picture of the bug in the foil tray containing what was left of his meal.

He wrote: “Air India now serves cockroach for vegetarian meals on AI127.”

The outraged passenger then added the hashtags “sick to my stomach”, “traumatized” and “cockroach in food”.

Revolted Twitter users also expressed their disgust in comments below the post.

One wrote: “That’s how they deal with their passengers?”

Another branded the company a “failed airline”, and a third called for a boycott.

The airline quickly tweeted back, apologising to Rahul.

Air India wrote: “We apologies (sic) for any inconvenience caused.

“We have a zero-tolerance policy in this respect. Obligatory action is taking place.”

And the company’s senior manager for corporate communications Dhananjay Kumar told the Times of India: “Air India took serious note of the incident and issued notice to the caterer concerned immediately.

“Further investigation is going on.”