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Stockholm Revisited

The released hostages swing between sympathy for their captors and extreme fear

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Stockholm Revisited
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Fearful adversity once again made strange bedfellows-aboard the hijacked IC 814. Recalls passenger-turned- hostage Daman Kumar Soni: "When he was in one of his better moods, the nicest of them all, the hijacker called Burger, asked honeymooners on the plane what they would name their first-borns. Most ladies giggled out Burger. Then someone playfully said, ‘Burger bhai, now ask these ladies whether they are as enthusiastic about letting their children grow up to become hijackers like you!’ Burger burst out laughing, so did the women...you see, he was quite a likeable character," says Soni. But did he like the terrorist? "Most male passengers liked Burger 40 per cent, the ladies liked him 60 per cent, I liked him only 10 per cent. But that’s because I had heard Rupin Katyal moan himself to death on the seat next to me. For me it was difficult liking them, no matter how nice they were."

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Seated much ahead of Soni and ignorant of Katyal’s murder till they reached Delhi, newly-wed couple Sukhvinder and Rajinder Singh too speak of the almost intimate moments they shared with the hijacker called Doctor. "He complimented me on my jewellery and specially liked one of my rings," says the shy bride, "I’d feel so relaxed when it was his or Burger’s turn to watch us. I’ll never forget how they’d rush with water whenever I asked, gun in the other hand." Adds husband Rajinder: "But all five of them were courteous. As polite as captors can be. They even related incidents of how their loved ones are tortured mercilessly as they rot in Indian jails. Nails yanked out, hair burnt, forced to urinate into each others’ mouths. Our troops commonly rape and kill their women, but they treated our ladies with such respect. Even called them sisters."

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Shivering in the sub-zero Kandahar temperatures during a plane-repair session on ground, flight engineer Anil Jaggia too forged a bond with the hijacker who was escorting him. Overwhelmed by the youth’s offer of his leather coat, Jaggia asked him how he, who was pointing a gun to kill with one hand, could protect with the other. "The boy said ‘that’s duty and this is also duty. You are like my father’. I refused to take his jacket and told him that as his father I too was duty-bound to protect him. He was wearing only a thin t-shirt underneath, he’d have caught a chill," recalls Jaggia, one among the plane’s three-man cockpit crew.

Before they left the plane, Jaggia gifted his torch to this same hijacker. With a word of advice: "You are a good boy, I told him. Just on the wrong path, this torch will help you find your way." The hijacker did accept Jaggia’s gift then, but returned it moments later, saying his chief had told him not to take any tokens from the hostages. Flight engineer Jaggia insists that the "humanity" of the hijackers makes it to print: "Wherever this young boy is, I want him to read and know I truly appreciate the gesture of kindness he made on that cold Kandahar day."

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They are bizarre, these feelings of appreciation, and even sporadic admiration, that many of the hostages breathlessly mouth about the five men who held them captive for seven days. Hijackers who murdered an innocent man in cold blood even as his newly-wed bride sat oblivious to his pain just some distance away. People who kept knifing another man till he stuck his tongue out and pretended to be dead. Who, on one nerve-wracking occasion, methodically distributed water, read their prayers and opened the doors of the craft in preparation for "executions that are not supposed to be held in closed places. "

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So why such unforced empathy with these captors? "Because seven days is time enough in this kind of an abusive situation for ego boundaries-the difference between the self and the other-to dissolve. But mostly because without believing in the justness of their tormentors, the hostages couldn’t have coped with the uncertainty of the situation. It’s a defence mechanism used by the mind to control the environment," says Apollo Hospital psychiatrist Achal Bhagat.

Yes, these are classic symptoms of the Stockholm Syndrome and Delhi-based psychiatrist Sanjay Chugh estimates that at least 90 per cent of the hostages aboard the hijacked aircraft must be experiencing them. A syndrome that is common in survivors of human-perpetrated trauma, such as hijackings, kidnapping, sexual assault, battering and slavery. The expert elaborates: "It happens when a victim cannot escape a person who is, at least temporarily, more powerful and threatening. There’s little choice but to focus on the face, voice and mannerisms of the captor. And find ways, at least on a subconscious level, of pleasing and appeasing the abuser. These help the victim to find and focus on "good" things about the perpetrator. It’s called identification with the aggressor."

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Which perhaps explains why 14-year-old Nitin Soni, who is still hospitalised for having been deprived of the medicines he was taking through the seven traumatic days, wished with all his heart to shake Burger’s hands once. He cherishes the fact that before leaving Burger obliged. Ramesh Kumar, at 30 something, seems just as nostalgic as the teenager. "I was, of course, relieved to see them leave. But felt a tinge of sorrow for these young men leading such unnatural lives. Some of us even asked them whether we’d ever get to see them again."

Though this coping mechanism, inbred in the human psyche, has always existed, the phenomenon found its name, Stockholm, in 1973 when four Swedes held in a bank vault for six days during a robbery became attached to their captors. It was then that experts categorised it as the desire of the abused to bond with their abusers as a means to endure violence. But the most notorious instance of the Stockholm syndrome is that of American heiress Patty Hearst who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army and who, after some months, rechristened herself "Tanya" and joined their ranks. In 1974, she joined them in a bank robbery in San Francisco.

Unfortunately for them though, the passengers of IC 814 remember more than the "goodness" of their hijackers. Soni recounts in vivid detail how he along with six others, including Rupin Katyal, were randomly picked up for slaughter by the hijackers. Hands tied with a yellow nylon rope, strapped tightly to his seat, he heard that day the eerie sound of a knife stabbing a body. Little thuds. "I was next, except that they chose to kill in a vertical and not in a horizontal sequence," he shudders. Two hours he sat next to Katyal’s writhing body. "He kept mumbling ‘papa pani’ (father water)," says a stiff Soni, "They didn’t give him a drop. I just made sure I gave him enough space to writhe."

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In those two hours, Soni promised his gods he’d never touch alcohol and meat if he survived that day. He has survived but he can’t sleep. Neither can Rajinder, who says the nightmares scare him so much that he prefers to keep awake. Ramesh Kumar’s wife Veena, who died many deaths as she watched the ordeal on television, still suffers from "tremendous tension" the moment her husband is out of sight. As for Kumar himself, he’s decided never to travel by aircraft again but ever so often is panic-struck when he thinks that he might have to do so by force of circumstances.

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It’s really unfortunate that our country has no provisions to treat hostages for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This debilitating condition is bound to afflict all involved in this terrifying event, both the victims and their relatives," says Dr Chugh. "It involves trying to block out the traumatic incident and yet repeatedly reliving the ordeal in the form of flashback episodes, memories, nightmares or frightening thoughts, especially when exposed to events or objects reminiscent of the terrifying incident. Also, patients suffering this disorder avoid all trauma-related stimuli by numbing of general responsiveness. Consequently, they suffer from emotional numbness, insomnia, depression, and irritability or outbursts of anger."

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Twenty-year-old Sukhvinder already seems to be a copybook case for this post-trauma disorder. Katyal’s widow and she were both the same age, both newly-weds, both on their honeymoon to Kathmandu, on the same dates, they were even returning on the same flight. "The hijackers could have picked on my husband instead of hers. I just keep thinking how life’s all about random luck. It could just as well have been me. Probably it’ll be me one day..."

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