Australian hostage tells: I expected to die
From JAMIE WALKER in New Delhi
5jan00

The Australian

AUSTRALIAN hostage Peter Ward wrote an emotional farewell note to his wife after the pilot of a hijacked Indian airliner tried to organise a revolt among passengers who agreed that "20 of us might die but the rest might live".

The desperate plan was hatched after the hijackers said they would order the plane into the air and crash it – killing all 160 people on board – unless the Indian Government met their demands to free jailed Islamic rebels.

Mr Ward, 36, had resigned himself to dying after he was told by the pilot the passengers had no choice but to attempt to overpower the five hijackers, who were armed with pistols and knives and patrolled the plane with hand grenades strapped to their hands.

He scribbled a goodbye to his wife, Anthea Mulakala, and 18-month-old daughter Teah, then hid the note in his wallet, hoping it would be found after his death.

Ms Mulakala revealed last night that she had not yet looked at the message. "I don't think I could handle looking at it," she said.

"He did not think they were going to get out of this alive. They faced death every hour of every day."

Mr Ward emerged for the first time since his release five days ago to tell The Australian that he still considered himself better off than some of the other 23 non-Indian nationals who were held by the hijackers.

Four kilograms lighter but otherwise looking healthy, Mr Ward said: "I think I got out of it relatively better than some of the other passengers . . . I think it was probably worse for some of the other foreigners who did not speak English."

Mr Ward also revealed that conditions on the grounded plane had become so foul during the eight-day crisis that many of the passengers stopped eating to avoid having to use the overflowing toilets. "I think people just tried to shut down their systems," he said.

Speaking in New Delhi, Ms Mulakala provided the first full account of her husband's terrifying experience in a lengthy interview with The Australian. He has spoken to her in depth about the hijacking, but remains too traumatised to speak publicly.

The 155 passengers and crew were released on New Year's Eve after the Indian Government agreed to exchange their freedom for the release of three jailed Kashmiri rebel leaders in a controversial prisoner swap. The hijackers went free, despite having killed one of the passengers.

Ms Mulakala revealed that one of the hijackers had put a gun to her husband's head soon after the plane was seized on Christmas Eve and told him: "Do you want to live or die?" Mr Ward replied in a calm voice: "Yes, I want to live."

The passengers were moved to the back of the plane and ordered to make blindfolds from the headrest covers on their seats. For the first 12 hours of the hijacking, they were forced to sit with heads down, hands clasped between their knees. Mr Ward believes he survived two near plane crashes in those first harrowing hours. The plane touched down briefly in the Indian city of Amritsar but the pilot was ordered back into the air by the hijackers when it was still half-way down the runway and desperately short of fuel. Captain Devi Saran later told Mr Ward that the plane lifted off with little more than 50 metres of runway to spare.

At Lahore airport in Pakistan, the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing with only 90 seconds of fuel in the plane's tanks. Mr Ward said the aircraft had "smashed into the runway and bounced all over the place" after landing in the dark without the assistance of runway lights.

At some point in this drama, Indian national Ripen Katyal was led away by the hijackers and killed. Mr Ward said Katyal, a tall man standing nearly two metres, had been unable to keep his head down in the narrow seats. The hijackers told the passengers that Katyal had been released, but few believed them.

Later, one of the Western hostages was traumatised after he was bound and gagged and forced to lie down beside Katyal's body.

Mr Ward has told his wife that the worst moment of the hijacking came on the third day after the plane landed at Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

By then the non-Indian nationals were sitting together with the pilot and cabin crew.

Captain Saran, who was in the seat in front of Mr Ward, whispered that the hijackers had told him the Indian Government was refusing to negotiate.

The pilot said the hijackers had set a three-hour deadline, after which he would be forced to take off and crash the plane. Captain Saran told Mr Ward ""we need to get a few people together" to attempt to overpower the gunmen, action regarded by Mr Ward as suicidal. But he said he would help, agreeing with the pilot that ""20 of us might die, but the rest might live".

But the crisis eased when the deadline passed with no action by the hijackers. On another occasion, the aircraft lights failed in the early hours of the morning and the passengers believed this was the prelude to it being stormed.

Mr Ward was sitting in seat 15A and was one of the passengers closest to the front of the aircraft. He believed he would almost certainly be killed should security forces attempt to take the aircraft.

Ms Mulakala said Mr Ward had told her the hijackers were highly unpredictable and frequently violent. They walked up and down the aisles, masked, sometimes removing and replacing the pins of their hand grenades.

Mr Ward only realised the crisis was over when he looked out the window and saw the five hijackers walking to a waiting car.

Mr Ward told The Australian he planned to take only a week or so off before returning to work in Katmandu, where he is chief credit manager for ANZ's Nepalese subsidiary Grindlays.