Hijack that changed historyEVENTARJIMAND HUSSAIN TALIBHistory has marked the Srinagar-Jammu Ganga Fokker plane’s hijack on January 30, 1971 with mystery and contradicting accounts. Who actually planned the hijack? Was it India? Pakistan? Or the two young Kashmiris - Hashim Qureshi and Ashraf Qureshi - acted on their own behalfand JKNLF to achieve a political goal? And what was the objective? Highlight the Kashmir issue internationally? Or sow the seeds of isolation of East and West Pakistan for the eventual birth of Bangladesh?History has hardly answered these questions convincingly. History hasn’t given us any credible first-hand account ofthe hijack saga either. Today, 43 years after that fateful event, a 13-year school boy then on his maiden air journey on the same flight, adds to our understanding of the events with a stunning first-hand account of the hijack story. The details raise new questions. They also renew the need for fresh answers.On a sunny but chilly morning of January 30, 1971, two teenage boys, Pirzada Fayaz and his schoolmate, Ashfaq Hussain, left their Srinagar homes for theirlife’s first air journey. Headed for their boarding school at Chittorgarh, Rajasthan,the boys, on way to Srinagar airport, were nursing somewhat mixed feelings of nervous excitement and some sadness. Within the next few minutes, an Indian Airlines Fokker Friendship plane – named Ganga – would fly them to Jammu.Saying goodbye to their family members, the boys head straight to the aircraft parked at the largely unguarded and least fortified tarmac of the Srinagar airport. Those days there was no passenger frisking or luggage search at the airport. Besides the two boys, 25 other passengers were on board the plane. Engines start and the pilots position the plane on the runway. For Fayaz it was a dream coming true.As the Ganga was preparing for its Srinagar take-off, more than a thousand miles away, a deep political churning was unfolding on the banks of the Brahmaputra river in the then East Pakistan.Sheikh Mujibur Rahman-headed Awami League had posted a landslide victory in both Pakistan National Assembly and the Provincial government in East Pakistan. The party had won 160 of the 162 seats allotted to the East, thereby making it the majority party in the 313-seat National Assembly of united Pakistan. Its power takeover looked certain.One of the reasons for Awami League’s such landslide win was said to be the Cyclone Bhola of November 12, 1970, which had left East Pakistanis bitter and angry. Bhola had killed hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed much of the coastal areas. The Bangla people had felt that West Pakistan’s response to the cyclone was “insensitive, and sluggish.”Meanwhile, the Ganga plane’s engines were put on full throttle and it just took off from the Srinagar airport. Pirzada Fayaz and his classmate, sitting in the second or the third row on the right side of the plane,were euphoric. They were enjoying their life’s first flying experience, craning their necks to the window to see the mountainsand their snows.Interestingly, Ganga had been recalled into the service only a few weeks after its formal decommissioning. Later, history would question that. History would later also debate if the Ganga’s Srinagar-Jammuflight had anything to do with all that was happening on the Brahmaputra river banks.As the plane was about to touch down, recounts Fayaz, two young men suddenly came from behind and started running towards the cockpit.“What was that?”, Fayaz and his mate gestured to each other.Within seconds came the moment of inevitability: one of the men holding a revolver in his hand kicked the cockpit door and headed straight to the pilots. Another one, holding a hand grenade in his hand, stood at front of the cockpit doorfacing the passengers. He looked nervous.His hands were trembling.History would later tell us the youth who crashed into the cockpit was Hashim Qureshi while the guy to stand guard at the cockpit gate was Ashraf Qureshi.As the passengers started shouting and sobbing, Ashraf Qureshi asked everyone to raise his hands.Fayaz and his mate heeded the order. “Zyada hoshyari dikahne ki koyee zaroorat nahi”, Ashraf had shouted while holding the grenade. Neither Fayaz nor other passengers had any inkling of what all was happening. They were nervous and their hearts were beating fast.In a hoarse but trembling voice Ashraf Qureshi directed us not to touch anything and told us keep our hands up; says Fayaz, adding he had still no idea about what all was going on.“Since we were sitting nearer to the cockpit door I could see one of the men pointing the revolver at the head of the pilot”, recalls Fayaz.The two pilots flying the plane were later known as Captain Kachroo and Captian Oberoi.The plane started to gain altitude again and tearing through the clouds it headed in a direction not leading to Srinagar. It was a beginning of a long new journey for Ganga, a journey that would change the course of the sub-continent’s history.Dhaka, meanwhile, was witnessing acute political strife. The stage was set for the West Pakistani establishment to prevent Mujibur Rehman and his party from forming a government. Awami League was being banned and declaration of martial law was on the cards.By then Indira Gandhi’s political secretaryD. P. Dhar, a Kashmiri, had succeeded in getting Indira Gandhi deeply interested in the happenings in Dhaka. West Pakistani establishment saw Mujibur Rehman’s claim for Prime Ministership and his insistence on his “six-point program” as a recipe for imminent secession. Awami League was being listened to in Delhi. Lahore was beginning to hear the alarm bells.Back in Ganga, it was an atmosphere of relaxed nervousness and anxious wait now. The hijackers were fully in control of the plane and the passengers seemed to have acquiesced with the inevitable. They were now somewhere above the plains of the Punjab. Fayaz was drowned in the thoughts of his family and his school.But in the midst of the whole anxious drama something hilarious was happeningtoo. A Sardar Ji gentleman was all along cracking jokes and trying to engage the hijacker in a witty conversation. Fayaz says Ashraf Qureshi standing in front of the cockpit didn’t respond to the “jokes”. He didn’t object either.Sitting ahead of Fayaz and his friend in thefront row was Dr. Naseer A. Shah, the then Principal of the only Medical College of the State of Jammu & Kashmir. Sensing the passengers’ curiosity about the location of the plane, he had turned behind and informed them that they were flying somewhere over the Punjab. The hijackers had not objected to this intervention either. Incidentally, Ashraf Qureshi, a student of medical science at Srinagar’s Medical College happened to stand right in front of his college principal. So, possibly, his nervousness!And then suddenly some noise started coming out from the cockpit. A heated argument was going on between Hashim Qureshi and the pilots. Due to the noisy engines the nature of the argument was not exactly known. The argument sub-sided after a while.And then the plane started another descend. As the plane started its final touch- down, the passengers still had no idea about the place the plane was landing at. A big surprise was awaiting them.As the plane started taxiing, Fayaz’s school-mate Ashfaq pulled him to show the planes parked on the tarmac. The boys were perplexed to read the PIA- plane markings. They had never seen those crescents and stars painted on any plane’s tail.Now worry had started to dawn on the young boys. In the plane there were mixed expressions of excitement and alarm. The airport Ganga had just landed at was witnessing a high security activity. Security guards had surrounded the plane,and the airport was being quickly secured.After some moments of pause, the plane door was thrown open. Fayaz and his school mate saw two aluminium boxes being thrown out of the plane from the door, presumably to act as a stair case for getting down. And one of the hijackers was the first one to jump out, most probably Hashim Qureshi.Since the aircraft had run out of drinking water some drinking water bottles fo
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 09:03:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015