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GPK and the hijack
BIRATNAGAR, MAR 26 -
It was an audacious plot even by today’s standards. Hijack a flight, get it to land in India, steal the cash that the flight was carrying, and make a run.
It was also a sign that Girija Prasad Koirala had come onto his own, with him ready to defy his elder brother B.P.’s instructions. “Even if B.P. doesn’t agree, we have to go ahead with it (the hijack),” he is reported to have said.
Durga Subedi was one of the co-conspirators in the plot that could not have been possible without GPK. Subedi recalls how the democratic movement was facing a crunch of funds, and a young Congress activist called Saroj Koirala remarked upon the idea of a hijack while in a Kathmandu jail. GPK was interested, and pushed his weight behind the plan. “He was someone who didn’t care about what happened if he had a certain goal in his mind,” Subedi says.
At the time, Indian currency used to be shipped by air from Biratnagar to Kathmandu. After Subedi was released from the jail, he told GPK about the plan. GPK then told him, “Find out more about the logistics”, and said he would speak to B.P. Koirala, who was in India at the time, about it.
B.P. did not agree with the plot. Despite that disapproval, GPK decided he would go ahead. “It can be done,” he said, according to Subedi, “We have to do it.”
Subedi found out the date and timings of the flight, the amount of cash, and the procedures involved from Rashtra Bank employees sympathetic to the cause. After all the information had been gathered, GPK, Sushil Koirala, and Subedi met in Forbesganj, Bihar, to finalise the date: Friday, July 13, 1973.
The hijackers were to be Subedi, Basant Bhattarai, and Nagendra Dhungel. However, only two tickets could be arranged for the 8 am flight. Then, the hijackers found out Indian actress Mala Sinha, and her husband C.P. Lohani, were also on the flight. Subedi then pretended to be sick, and begged Lohani to give them his ticket.
Once on the Twin-Otter, the trio waited until the flight crossed the Koshi, and then barged into the cockpit. “We grabbed the pilot by the collar, put a pistol against his head, and told him to divert the flight towards Forbesganj,” Subedi recalls. The second pilot tried to interfere; Basant Bhattarai then entered the cockpit with a grenade in his hand. “He had almost unpinned the grenade,” says Subedi. The pilots finally agreed, amid the wailing of the 17 or 18 passengers.
Once over Forbesganj, difficulties arose when they could not figure out where to land. The plane circled overhead for a while, when they finally saw a small grassy strip with a red flag fluttering on a tree--the flag was put as a marker by GPK. “We got the plane to land there, took out the cash box, and asked the pilot to leave.”
At Forbesganj, according to GPK himself, he and Chakra Banstola were waiting for the flight to land. Banstola didn’t know the full details of the hijack; only that a plane was supposed to land. They quickly put the cash box inside a jeep, and sped off.
GPK had told the others that he would take the cash to where B.P. was. Banstola and he drove the vehicle towards Darjeeling, where they hid the cash in B.L. Sharma’s, an acquaintance of B.P., house.
After hiding the cash at Sharma’s house, GPK and Banstola got themselves a beer. While they were drinking, they heard the news of the hijack and the subsequent robbery on the radio. Sharma told them the news later, to which GPK replied, “It was the communists.”
GPK recalled in his televised memoir that he met B.P. after the hijack in Patna, and told him, “My job is finished. Now, it’s up to you to get the money from Darjeeling.”
Posted on: 2010-03-27 08:10
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