Captain recalls first hijacking in 1971

Captain recalls first hijacking in 1971
S CHANDER SHARMA

JAMMU, DEC 28: He was on the front seat, his mind was tense and his blood boiling. He unfastened his seatbelt and was out to grab one of the two hijackers. But his co-passenger, sensing his motive, stopped him. And he dropped the idea as so many other lives were involved.

This was the scene inside the Indian Airlines Fokker Friendship which was hijacked on Sunday, January 30, 1971 on its flight from Srinagar to Jammu with 28 passengers and four crew members on board. And the person who planned to grab one of the ``shivering, confused and sweating'' hijackers, Arshad, was Captain Mohan Singh, then 27 and serving in the Army.

Talking to The Indian Express, Capt Singh narrated the feelings of the hostages as well as the hijackers during the hijacking and two days during which they stayed in Pakistan. He said that everything was normal when the plane, on its routine from Srinagar to Jammu, was about to arrive at the destination with all the 28 passengers fastening their seatbelts before the landing.

Whenthe plane was flying over Nagrota, 13 km from Jammu by road, the two hijackers, Ashim Qureshi and Arshad, stood up from their tail-end seats. Qureshi, carrying a revolver, entered the cockpit to accost G S Oberoi and K K Kachroo, the pilot and co-pilot, respectively. Arshad, with a grenade in hand, announced that the plane had been hijacked and was being taken to Lahore.

``Since it was the first incident of hijacking in India, as well as in Asia, the passengers, including women and children, got stunned. Many of the women and even men started crying on realising the gravity of the situation,'' Capt Singh said.

But, Capt Singh recalls, even Arshad was sweating and shivering with the grenade in hand.`` His condition was nervous and in the nervousness sometimes he talked in Kashmiri, then in English and in Urdu. I think it was because he was a young fanatic pro-Pakistan Kashmiri and not a militant. Though he hijacked the plane, mentally he was very upset and shivered when he realised that his own life toowas in danger with a grenade in hand,'' Capt Singh added.

He said that since he was young and promoted to the rank of captain just two days earlier, and he was in uniform and sitting in the front row on seat 4E, which was very near to Arshad, he slightly loosened the seat belt to make an attempt to grab Arshad. But his co-passenger, Dr Nasir Ahmed, the then principal in the Government Medical College, Srinagar, sensing his feelings, cautioned him. ``It was then that I dropped the idea and kept myself quiet,'' Capt Singh said.

Later, the plane arrived at Lahore and one of the hijackers came out to confirm whether the plane was really in Lahore. He then freed the passengers saying, ``We are sorry. We have no enmity with you people but we are against India which was forcibly keeping Kashmir with it.'' The hijackers placed no demand as the motive was just to internationalise the Kashmir issue.