LUCKNOW: He hijacked a plane carrying 126 passengers, including two former union ministers, and was rewarded with an election ticket and unlimited access to India’s premier political family for the rest of his life. Bholanath Pandey, who hooked up with close friend Devendra Pandey to skyjack an Indian Airlines Boeing 737 in the winter of 1978, passed away following prolonged illness late last month.He was 74.
With him a fascinating episode in India’s turbulent political history of the 1970s comes to an end. The hijack became his calling card, a gift that kept on giving throughout his life. A Youth Congress leader and a close Sanjay Gandhi aide, Bholanath went on to become a two-time Congress (I) MLA (1980 and 1989) from Doaba assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia district. “Indira-ji used to treat him like her foster son. In fact, I was born a month after the hijack drama and Indira-ji gave me my name,” said Bhola’s son Abhishek who works at IIT BHU, Varanasi. The hijacker duo enjoyed close access to India’s power people for decades. He even contested the 2014 Lok Sabha polls on a Congress ticket from Salempur.
The Hijacking, Act 1
There wasn’t anything unusual about the afternoon of December 20, 1978. The hopping IA flight 410, coming from Calcutta, took off from Lucknow at around 5.45 pm towards its destination, Delhi. No one took notice of two passengers who boarded the plane from UP’s capital. One of them wore a kurta pyjama, the other a dhoti. Both wore “jawahar” jackets. In their mid20s the duo presented a contrast in persona. One of them was tall and athletic (Bholanath), the other was short and stocky (Devendra). The shorter one donned the talwar-cut moustache in vogue those days while the taller one sported a beard. The two sat comfortably on their seats in the 15th row.
When the Palam Airport was a few minutes away, the bearded passenger walked towards flight purser GV Dey and politely asked him if he could visit the cockpit. His fellow-traveler joined him. Such requests were common those days. But soon the duo pushed hard against the cockpit door and forced it open. An eerie silence filled the plane.
This is your commander speaking… We have been hijacked.
Shortly the pilot’s voice rang out. “… This is your commander speaking… We have been hijacked and will now fly to Patna,” announced Captain MN Battiwala over the public address system. After a brief pause, he spoke again statingthat they were headed to Varanasi.
Later in interviews, the captain -who lived in Calcutta’s Park Circus at that time -recalled the moment. “From beginning to end, it was a horrible task explaining to those idiots that there was such a thing called an aircraft’s range of flight. First, they demanded to be flown to Nepal. When I told them -the crazier of the two pointing a pistol at my head that we were not carrying that much fuel -they demanded to be flown to Bangladesh.
I bet they had forgotten their geography.” Geography may npot have been their strong point but the skyhackers were educated. Devendra was a graduate. Bhola, a nickname given by Sanjay Gandhi, later even earned a PhD in Hindi from BHU. The two had come in touch with each other through Sanjay Gandhi in 1976 and became friends.
The hijackers introduced themselves as “non-violent Gandhians.” In the plane, they delivered impassioned speeches condemning the arrest of exPM Indira Gandhi, who was thrown out of power in the post-Emergency 1977 Lok Sabha polls. They also raised slogans hailing Ms Gandhi and Youth Congress supremo Sanjay Gandhi, which earned them applause from Congress supporters on board. “They abused the Janata Party and accused the then PM Morarji Desai of executing political vendetta,” wrote a vernacular daily.
The Act of Negotiation
The pilot taxied the unscheduled flight to a corner of the Varanasi airport.The duo wanted to speak with the then UP chief minister Ram Naresh Yadav over the phone, but he refused to oblige. The Pandeys pressed harder and demanded the CM get on board for negotiations or else face repercussions.
By now, the PM office was also tracking the developments and issued instructions to the CM. Old-timers recalled that Desai personally spoke to the UP CM. Yadav’s special flight reached Varanasi around midnight.
Negotiations began at around 1.30 am. Apart from demanding Ms Gandhi’s release, they wanted PM Desai to resign. The duo also wanted to address a press conference at the airport lounge.
Twists in the tale
By midnight the water on the aircraft was finished. Children cried but there was no milk for them, TOI reported. Around 6 am, some passengers complained that the aircraft had become unbearably stuffy and requested the hijackers to get the rear doors open. Meanwhile, the captain pulled back the emergency chute release lever. Taking advantage, half the passengers scrambled down the tarmac. About 60 remained hostage.
By this time, the local administration had convinced Dr JD Pandey, Devendra’s father, a government doctor, to issue an appeal. It worked. The youths surrendered around 6.40 am on December 21.
Then came the final twist in the tale. The bomb in their hand was actually a cricket ball wrapped in a piece of black cloth and the guns, which had India worried and agog, were just toys. “Not a single passenger had realized that…” the Times of India reported. The high drama ended as a black comedy.
Rewards for loyalty
But for both Bholanath and Devendra, the hijack turned out to be a super career move. Five days after the hijack, Indira Gandhi was released on Dec 26. When she returned to power in 1980, all charges against the two hijackers were dropped. When Bholanath reached Doaba to file his nomination, he was welcomed by thousands. After Sanjay’s demise the same year, the two-time MLA also enjoyed Rajiv Gandhi’s trust. “Papa used to travel with Rajiv Gandhi across states. Even Rahul bhaiya remained in touch with him,” says Abhishek.
Devendra was also given a ticket from Jaisinghpur assembly seat which he won in 1980 and 1985. Local Congressmen said that he died at least a decade ago.
But as Dwijendra Tripathi, a Youth Congress contemporary of Bholanath says, “Their street-smartness became an exceptional template to define loyalty.”
