His first flight was into terror

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, JAN. 1. Nepal had been a beautiful experience. Worth the money and the time. After a five-day trip to the mountain kingdom, Mr. R. P. Kannan was a little nervous when he boarded the IC-814 Indian Airlines flight to New Delhi. Understandably so, it was his first time in an aeroplane.

A native of Vellore in Tamil Nadu, the only language in which Mr. Kannan is comfortable is Tamil. He does not understand a word of Hindi and follows only a smattering of English. Once aboard, he was very uncomfortable with the actions of the airhostesses who demonstrated the use of the safety equipment in the aircraft.

Half-an-hour later, a man came with a revolver and a grenade in his hand. He said something which Mr. Kannan could not follow, but like others, he too bent down.

``I thought it was a regular drill similar to what the airhostesses had carried out before taking off. After some time, everyone removed the cloth behind their seats and began blindfolding themselves. I was confused and looked around. Suddenly, one of the masked men hit me on the back of my head. Now I knew something was seriously wrong.''

Then, one of his friends muttered to him in Tamil that the plane had been hijacked. All the windows were shut and there was nothing these people could see. This, according to Mr. Kannan, carried on till Kandahar. ``I never came to know where we landed and where we were till Wednesday.''

The hijackers, Mr. Kannan said, psychologically tortured the passengers. They would be very nice for a couple of hours, allow people to visit the toilet, and talk to them decently. But, the moment passengers began to feel a little comfortable, they would adopt a stern attitude.

``This was particularly true in the case of heart patients. Whenever anyone of them started feeling sick, the hijackers pacified them trying to explain the Kashmir cause. As soon as they felt better, the hijackers hit them on their head and ask them to keep shut.'' The hijackers were ``unpredictable'' because of which no one wanted to disobey them. According to Mr. Kannan, the hijackers had exclusively reserved the two toilets in the front for themselves while the two at the back were meant for the hostages. ``Every 10 times a person asked to visit the toilet, he would be permitted once, get hit seven times and ignored on other occasions.''

It was complete terror, according to Mr. Kannan, that ruled their lives during those seven days. ``We were scared to death. I never saw any one of them leave their pistol for a second. It was like an extension of their fingers. And the thumb stuck in the pin of a grenade tied to their waist.''

On Friday morning, Mr. Kannan said, the hijackers told them that they would start killing 10 passengers at a time after 10 a.m., the deadline they had set for the Indian Government. ``We thought it was all over. At 10 a.m., they extended it by an hour and finally said good-bye to meet again.''

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