All Indians have heaved a sigh of relief over the relatively quick release of passengers, crew and the hijacked Airbus at Lahore airport. The agony could have lasted much longer as it often has in such cases. And all Indians will heartily endorse a vote of thanks for President Zia-ul-Haq, his aides and. his officials. The Pakistanis have been most helpful from the beginning to the end of the sorry episode. To begin with, they did not wish to allow the aircraft to land at all at Lahore airport. Apparently they were keen to establish that they had nothing to do with the hijackers regardless of whether they were Akali or Kashmiri extremists. They allowed the aircraft to land only when they were told that it was running short of fuel and the hijackers threatened to kill the passengers and blow up the plane. Then they immediately set about the task of getting the passengers and the crew released as soon as possible; and once they had secured their release, they lost no time in announcing that a PIA plane would take them back to New Delhi. For all this they deserve our unstinted gratitude whatever the reality regarding their alleged involvement with the Akali and Kashmiri extremists and secessionists. As at the time of the hijacking of an Indian plane to Lahore in October 1982, they have lived up to their responsibilities as members of the international community and not allowed the recent souring of relations with this country to influence their conduct. In one respect they have done better this time. Instead of letting an Indian plane fly back the passengers and the crew, they have sent them home in their own aircraft. India would, of course, have extended similar cooperation to Pakistan if a Pakistani plane had been hijacked to one of its airports. But the fact remains that it was our aircraft that was hijacked by some of our own misguided people and that the Pakistanis have been as helpful as they could possibly have been.
As we praise the Pakistanis, we cannot condemn too strongly the guilty member or members of the security staff at Srinagar airport. We use this formulation advisedly. To us,this does not appear to be a case of generally lax security arrangements. To us, it seems to be a case of collusion. On the face of it at least, it does not look as if the hijackers managed to smuggle in their pistols and hand-grenades by taking advantage of a casual atmosphere at the airport. Instead it looks that some security man or men deliberately let them slip through with their weapons. Indeed, it is possible that such an officer or officers himself or themselves slipped the weapons through the security check for the hijackers. This proposition is based on the experience of a number of passengers travelling from Srinagar to New Delhi – they have been carefully frisked – and the fact that in the wake of the army operations in Punjab the authorities had sent special instructions to step up security arrangements at all airports. It stands to reason that they would have taken special precautions at Srinagar airport after the dismissal of Dr. Farooq Abdullah and his government on Monday. Despite all their failings, the Indian security agencies are not all that inefficient when they are apprehending a development as they have been in this case. They have virtually been sure that an attempt to hijack a plane will be made and most probably from Srinagar.
There are certain other aspects of the affair which cannot be commented upon just now for want of adequate information. The identity of the hijackers, for instance. They are, of course, adherents of Bhindranwale. But it is far from clear that they are well-trained guerrillas. In fact they look like novices who have acted on a passing emotion or whim rather than on a careful consideration of the pros and cons of their move. There is the same uncertainty about their motives. Did they just want to make a splash in propaganda terms? Or did they seriously believe that they could coerce India into conceding some of their demands? If they wanted to get out of India, why? If they did, why did they choose this dangerous form of exit? And at the moment of writing it is not known how the Pakistanis finally managed to persuade the hijackers to surrender.