Hijack hostages grapple with the facts

NEW DELHI, Jan 1: India's freed hijack hostages are grappling to shake off the trauma and confusion of their eight-day ordeal, and take in what actually happened around them as they sat on a lonely runway in Afghanistan, reports AFP.

Cut-off for more than a week inside an Indian Airlines Airbus, many of the passengers who were freed and returned home Friday, had very little understanding of the very events of which they had been at the epicentre.

As the world watched the drama at Kandahar Airport unfold on television, some on board flight IC814 were not even sure where they were.

"Kandahar, where's that?" perplexed passengers asked as they finally stepped down from the Airbus after being freed in a swap for three pro-Kashmiri militants held in Indian jails.

One hostage, P. Khandwarkar, thought he was in Lahore or elsewhere in Pakistan, while another had been guessing Oman or probably Bangladesh.

"When they got off and were told they were in Kandahar, they had to ask where it was. None of them even realised that they were in Afghanistan," said one of the freed hostages' relatives.

"For the first four days, no one knew where we were," admitted passenger Prasad Babu.

"It was only through a food pack four days later that I learned we were in Afghanistan."

Personal confusion also figured in the tragedy of hostage Rachna Katyal, whose husband Rupin was stabbed to death by the hijackers -- the only casualty of the crisis.

National sympathy in India for Rachna was compounded by the realisation, when she returned to New Delhi, that she was still unaware of the fate met by her husband.

The couple, who were only married on December 3, were returning from a honeymoon in Nepal when the plane was hijacked.

"The girl still does not know anything," Rupin's uncle Kanwal Katyal told reporters.

"We are trying to prepare her mentally, before breaking the news to her."

A doctor who attended Rachna at the airport, painted a bleak picture of her condition.

"She's in very bad shape. Rachna doesn't recall anything and is only searching for her husband everywhere," Dr. R.K. Sinha said.

The hijackers deliberately kept their hostages in the dark about the progress of negotiations with the Indian government, or taunted them with misinformation.

"We were continuously given the impression that the government was doing nothing for us. At one time, we even believed them," said Rajinder Singh.

The Indian Airlines plane was hijacked after take off from Kathmandu bound for New Delhi on Christmas eve. It was forced to fly to Amritsar in northern India, Pakistan and Dubai before landing at Kandahar on December 25, where the crisis ended Friday after five days of hard bargaining.

While some freed hostages would clearly take some time to recover from their experience, others seemed to be shaping up very well.

"There is hardly any evidence of trauma. They all slept like stones last night," said Dr. Sanjeev Chibber, who had six relatives on the plane.

"This morning they had a hearty breakfast, and they seem to be having a good time," said Chibber, who had become the unofficial relatives' spokesman during the hijacking.