Burger

Plane hostages recall the terror amid the boredom

The hostages called one hijacker dressed all in black by his nickname, Burger, and within days of commandeering an Indian Airlines jet, he had the 178 passengers and 11 crew members joining in for singing games. He blew hot and cold, depending on his moods

Wednesday, Jan 05, 2000

I

One of the five hijackers of Indian Airlines Flight 814 last week dressed in black and said his nickname was Burger. A mercurial person, he could be kind at times, ruthless at others, according to interviews with some of the hostages this week in New Delhi.

The adults listened to him recite Urdu poetry. The children called him "Uncle." And a newlywed wife who had a birthday in captivity was grateful when he bought a shawl from a Nepali hostage who dealt in them and presented it to her.

He was the most sympathetic of the five hijackers, and when he walked up and down the aisles holding a gun, he would pause solicitously to chat with passen-gers, who were only allowed to go to the bathroom after asking for permission.

"He was very friendly with everybody," said Ipseeta Menon, 25, who once asked him if he got his nickname because he liked eating hamburgers. (He did not, and the name remains a mystery.)

Cut off as the hostages were, with even the sunlight shut out by the drawn window covers, they thought the masked Burger was a nice guy -- that is until last Thursday morning, when he told them that they would all be killed one by one because the Indian government had refused to meet the hijackers' demands.

As it turned out, this did not happen. The story had a happy ending. Last Friday the hostages were released after India agreed to free three militants who, like the hijackers, were opposed to Indian rule of the Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

But the experience of being trapped on an Airbus jet for eight days has left many of the hostages feeling deeply traumatized.

In interviews, they described days of tedium and moments of terror. They talked of living with the stench of overflowing toilets and of deciding to stop eating solid foods in an effort to avoid the dreaded bathrooms.

And some admit to the strange bond they formed with Burger, the tall, muscular hijacker who was good cop and bad cop all rolled into one.

"He could change from a very sweet person to one who could shoot you within seconds," said Ravi Kollatt, a former merchant marine from Cochin, India. "I could see it in his eyes. They were smiling eyes, but then suddenly they would become small."

The hostages' journey began on Dec. 24. Flight 814 was late, but there was a festive air in Katmandu as they waited to board the plane that would carry them on a hop to New Delhi.

Among them were eight newlywed couples returning from honeymoons in Nepal. Married in arranged matches, they had only begun to get to know each other -- but would soon find themselves tested in a way they had never imagined.

Several passengers said they thought it was a joke when men with guns yelled that they were hijackers. One described a steward pushing a drink cart down the aisle who kept moving when one of the hijackers waved a gun at him. Weren't those pistols and the grenade just fake weapons, like in the movies?

But reality quickly set in.

"When my husband raised his head, they shoved it down roughly," said Suchana Goel, of Bhopal, a newlywed. "We were terrified."

For the first two days the hijackers were jumpy and brusque, hostages said. The plane kept taking off and landing in different places -- the passengers had no idea where.

As they jumped from Amritsar, India, to Lahore, Pakistan, to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and finally, on Dec. 25, to Kandahar, Afghanistan, they were bewildered. Many were blindfolded.

On the harrowing first night, before the plane landed in Dubai, the hijackers picked out a group of strong-looking men and took them into the executive-class compartment, whose occupants had all been moved to economy. Ripen Katyal, 25, a newlywed, was among them.

"Right in front of us they slashed his throat," said K. Keshav Kannan, who was in Nepal on business for his company. "They wanted to make an example."

Only a few knew what had happened. Katyal's new wife, Rachna, sitting in economy, had not heard a thing.

In Dubai, the hijackers released a group of 27 women and children and unloaded Katyal's body. When her husband did not return, Mrs. Katyal got scared.

"Poor thing, she was crying for two days," said Mrs. Menon, herself one of the newlyweds. "They were avoiding her. Then on the third day, Burger said to her, `I am like your elder brother. Your husband has been released in Dubai. You should be happy he is safe and sound.' Rachna never knew he was killed."

Unaware that the hijackers had murdered Katyal, many passengers became chummy with Burger once the plane settled in Kandahar. Though cameras for CNN and BBC were constantly trained on the craft and television stations in India broadcast news of little else, the passengers heard nothing.

One day Burger started a round of joke-telling. He began it with the one about the man in the helicopter who feels cold, asks why the fan is on, stops the propeller and dies. There was weak laughter. Then the captain of the jet picked up the thread and told one, too.

Burger also got them to participate in a singing competition called "antakshri." One passenger would sing part of a song, then the next would have to start a song with the last word in the previous song. There was merriment as young people sang Hindi movie tunes.

Last Wednesday, the sixth day of the incident, the hijackers told the hostages that 35 of them would be exchanged for one militant. Women, children and the elderly were selected for the swap.

One elderly woman refused to leave her grandchildren.

Many of those left behind sobbed, fearing they would be more vulnerable now that many of the weaker people were gone.

But the next morning brought what all the hostages said was the most terrifying moment.

Something had gone badly wrong in the negotiations. The deal had apparently fallen through. And Burger was furious.

People were still asleep, but he wanted to wake them.

First he threw open the doors of the jet and the cold wind swept down the aisles. Then he turned on the lights. Finally he got on the intercom. He told them all to pray to their gods because in half an hour he and his fellow hijackers would begin shooting them. And if anyone so much as moved, he warned, he or she would be killed.

He ordered them all to put their heads down. For hours Mrs. Menon, a dentist, said there was pin-drop silence except for the sound of people weeping. She held onto her husband's hand for comfort.

"At that time, we came to know these people were not to be trusted,'' she said. "We thought the end had really come.''

But that same afternoon, the hostages say, the hijackers came to tell them that they had made a new deal to free all of them.

The next day, New Year's Eve, it was the hijackers who left the plane first. Before climbing down the ladder, Burger turned to the hostages and apologized for what they had done. "We'll meet again,'' he said, waving.

In his final moments with his captives, several of them joked with him.

"If you see us in an airport lounge and you are on a similar mission, will you tip us off so we can stay off the flight?'' one asked. He promised he would. And then he was gone, down a ladder to a waiting car that whisked him away on a vanishing mission.