Four Miles to Freedom (16 page)

‘Good lord,' said Hamid. ‘Let me speak to the tehsildar.'

After a brief conversation the tehsildar put the phone down with great satisfaction. ‘I was right,' he told them. ‘You may be Pakistani airmen, but you are wanted men. I'm to hold you here until the Air Force police arrive.'

The tehsildar ordered his clerk to take the prisoners to the town jail, and they set off, accompanied once again by an entourage of armed men. Our trio was feeling somewhat relieved not to be facing a week or more in the Landi Kotal lock-up, though they didn't want to show it. Dilip was amazed that his idea had actually worked, and optimistic that somehow Usman would get them out of this mess. Soon, perhaps before the end of the day, they would be whisked away from Landi Kotal in the hands of a police force they could trust to deliver them, intact, back to their camp in Rawalpindi. They might not have to spend a night in the local jail after all.

It was a long walk to the jail on the other side of town. When they arrived they entered a small one-storey building that was unbelievably filthy and buzzing with flies. ‘There was excrement in the cells, cobwebs, terrible smells,' remembers Dilip. ‘We wouldn't have lasted a week in that place.'

Before locking them up, their jailers told them they must do a body search. That was the rule (‘kanoon'). In the course of the search the POW identity cards fell out of their waist bands. The policemen studied the cards. They obviously recognized the photos but couldn't read the English. One of them took the cards and left the building.

‘We wondered what would happen next,' writes Sinhji. ‘We didn't have long to wait though. The tehsildar, whose name was Shah Tehan, arrived with a posse of tall grim-looking locals. He asked us our names again. This time we gave our real identities for we saw him holding our identity cards. He was so furious that he was shaking with rage.'

‘Why did you lie?' he shouted. ‘Kaffirs! POWs! How many escaped? From where?'

The tirade went on and on. Dilip was thankful that they were already locked in the filthy cell. At least the tehsildar was doing his rant on the other side of the bars. But their prospects were now as dismal as they had been back in the office. ‘It looked like a firing squad for us in the next few minutes,' Sinhji remembers thinking.

After a few minutes a messenger came running in and whispered something in the tehsildar's ear. His tirade against the POWs ended abruptly. He gave some orders in Pashto. Keys and handcuffs were produced. ‘Here we go,' they thought.

The trio was handcuffed and chained to one another and marched back through town, accompanied by the tehsildar and his armed locals. It was another long march. Part way, they passed the tehsildar's office, but they didn't stop there. On they walked, sure they were being led to face a firing squad. Finally the tehsildar told them, ‘The political agent wants to see you.'

When they reached his office, the political agent, Mr Burki, came out to meet them. A youthful, clean-shaven man, smartly dressed in Western clothes, Burki exuded authority. As the tehsildar stood gaping, Burki ordered the prisoners' chains and handcuffs removed. Then he shook hands with each one of them. ‘Congratulations on a fine attempt,' he said. ‘Hardly anyone gets caught in Landi Kotal. The border is four miles down the road—just one hill to cross. You really had bad luck running into the tehsildar's clerk.'

‘How about giving us another twenty minutes?' joked Dilip. ‘That way we can keep the record clean.'

Once they entered the building they were taken to a hall of honour, the Jirga room, where tribal chiefs held their meetings. Burki gave instructions to his staff that the prisoners were to be treated with the same respect and decorum as visiting Pakistani officers. ‘They are our guests,' he said.
‘Dumba qatal kar.'
(Kill the lamb.)

Soon armchairs and a table were brought to the dais, and a wonderful feast was laid out for them. There was rice, lamb, melons, and other savoury dishes. They realized how hungry they were. They were almost certain they had Usman, as well as Burki, to thank. Surely it was Usman who had informed the political agent of their presence in Landi Kotal. If it weren't for Usman, they would still be dealing with the furious tehsildar and his rough cohorts.

After the feast they waited an hour or two for the arrival of the PAF police. But that time passed quickly. They were all so exhausted they dozed in their chairs.

Meanwhile, back in Rawalpindi, all the prisoners knew that the escape had taken place even before they sat down to breakfast. On his way to the toilet Singh noticed Chati sitting in Jafa's cell. ‘The sparrow has flown,' Chati whispered to Singh. Thus the word passed, as each man made his way to the toilet, which was next to Jafa's cell. ‘The sparrow has flown,' was whispered again and again. Once they sat down to a late breakfast in the interrogation room, tension was high. How long would the guards let three prisoners ‘sleep on' before they investigated?

Since no one wanted to be alone when the escape was discovered, after breakfast most of the men sought company. Only Coelho remained alone in Cell 2. Chati returned to Jafa's cell, where he had taken shelter earlier that morning, so that he could let his colleagues sleep on. Kuruvilla and Kamat were together in the cell they shared. Singh retreated to Bhargava's cell, which was directly across the courtyard from the escape cell. For over an hour Singh and Bhargava played cards, but their minds were not on the game.

‘We were all the time waiting to face the storm that would break out any time,' Singh remembers. ‘We discussed all kinds of possibilities, including being lined up and shot … We were aware of Pakistani POWs having been shot dead when they tried to break out of camps in India.'

But the calm continued. What could be happening, they wondered? By ten o'clock, the escape still hadn't been discovered. The two men continued to play cards, their eyes wandering frequently to the door of the cell across the yard.

Eventually the action was set off by a phone call taken in the guardroom by the corporal on duty. Singh and Bhargava didn't hear the phone, but they did see the corporal hurry across the courtyard to the residence of the PAF staff. In a few minutes he returned to the guardroom with a flight sergeant.

At this point, around ten thirty or so, a commotion erupted in the camp. ‘It was real hulchul,' Bhargava remembers. ‘Guards ran helter-skelter and we knew the news was out. One guard started counting us and soon we saw guards opening the escape room and removing the beds.'

Soon all seven POWs were separated and locked in solitary cells with both doors locked. Singh remembers being taken from Bhargava's cell to his own on the other side of the courtyard. It was a distance of twenty to twenty-five metres. The guards, with whom he'd spent months establishing an amicable relationship, were angry and on edge. They kept him in their gun sights the whole way. It had been like that in the beginning, and now tension was high all over again.

All the cells were searched and everything was taken away. They lost slippers and books and letters from home. Each man was left with the clothes he was wearing and his toothbrush. Singh was glad that he had hidden his roll of notes in the toilet. It was a miracle that the notes—a diary that he had been writing for months—had not been concealed in his shoe when the first search took place. He used to write notes in his cell then transport them to the toilet in his shoe. He had found a crevice in the flush tank's support system (the whole thing was loose) and that was his usual hiding place. Should the notes be discovered, no one would know where they came from. If they were discovered in his cell or on his person, he might be in trouble.

‘I am sure that each of us in the camp went through the same,' says Bhargava. The worst thing for most of them was the sudden and complete rupture in their relationships with the staff. ‘MWO Rizvi visited my cell and said, “Enemy will remain as enemy. We trusted you all and look what you have given us in return.”'

And Bhargava knew that Rizvi had a point. Most of them had considered Rizvi a friend. The escape had broken the trust and goodwill they had nurtured with him and other guards and attendants at the camp. The staff at the camp would be held responsible. What would happen to Rizvi, to the compliant Aurangzeb, to Shams-ud-din and Mehfooz Khan and all the other staff?

But, at that moment, Bhargava didn't dwell on their fate. He was more interested in the fate of his three brothers, who, as far as he knew, were still out there somewhere, trudging west to the Khyber Pass. Now that the escape had been discovered, the heat was on.

Aftermath

At about four o'clock in the afternoon, three jeeps, each one carrying three members of the PAF police, pulled up to the office of political agent Burki in Landi Kotal. The policemen were a rough and angry lot. Each prisoner was handcuffed and his ankles were shackled. Dilip was pushed into the back seat where he sat between two guards, his shackles anchored to the floor. In the front seat, another armed guard sat beside the driver. Before taking off, each prisoner was blindfolded. The ride to Peshawar took less than an hour, but they were not told where they were being taken, so tension was still high.

At the Peshawar air base, the jeeps pulled up in front of an old prison. The blindfolds and shackles were removed and the men were led down a long corridor to their cells. In fact, there were only two cells available, so Dilip, as senior officer, was housed in a converted office, much larger than a cell. On one wall was a fireplace with an iron grill. In the centre of the room sat a large rectangular table. At one time, years before, there had obviously been a stove in the centre of the room, where the table was now. When Dilip looked at the ceiling near the fan, he could see that most of the chimney hole had been filled in but there was still a small gap. He thought it might be possible to knock out some mortar and escape through the old chimney hole.

‘I was completely obsessed with the idea of escape,' he admits now. ‘I could think of nothing else. It was all amateurish and a very silly thing to do.'

His first step was to pry loose one of the iron bars from the grill of the fireplace. Then he placed a chair on the table, so that he could reach the high ceiling, and began to poke away at the mortar in the old chimney hole. As he was standing on the chair he heard keys jangling outside the office door. The guard had a set of keys and was trying one after another. By the time he found the right key and opened the door, Dilip had the chair off the table, and the iron bar back in its place.

As soon as the guard locked the door, Dilip mounted the table again. This ritual was repeated several times. Each time, as soon as he heard the keys jangle, he quickly got down. By the third or fourth time, the guard had become faster at finding the correct key, and caught him in the act of removing the chair from the table.

‘I was trying to adjust the fan,' Dilip explained.

‘The regulator is over there,' said the guard, pointing to the wall by the door.

But the guard was not fooled. Before long, he returned to shift Dilip to Grewal's cell, and Grewal to the converted office. Now Dilip was in a more secure room, but still, to make absolutely sure he would not make another attempt, the guard handcuffed him to a bar of the cell door and left the light on.

Dilip decided to raise a great fuss. ‘Get the provost marshal here,' he shouted. ‘I'm an Indian officer and won't accept this treatment!' He kept shouting until the guard turned off the light in his cell. That hardly made a difference because the section of the cell nearest the doorway was flooded with light from the corridor. Nevertheless, despite the heat, the mosquitoes, and the light, he slid his handcuff down the bar so that he could lie on a blanket (there was no bed in the cell) and sleep for the first time in two nights.

When breakfast arrived the next morning, he declared he was on a hunger strike. ‘I'm an Indian officer,' he said, with indignation. ‘I should not be treated in this manner. Until I see the provost marshal, I will not eat.'

Before long the base commander arrived and ordered Dilip's handcuff removed. He also agreed that Dilip and Sinhji, both housed in regular cells, would be provided with table fans. ‘If you behave yourself we will be nice to you,' he said, ‘but if you misbehave we know how to handle you.'

‘Okay,' said Dilip. ‘I will not do anything. Could I please have my breakfast now?'

When they heard this his friends down the corridor had to laugh. ‘Must be the shortest hunger strike in history!' shouted Grewal.

‘Well it got results!' countered Dilip

They stayed in Peshawar several nights. Since the fans were carefully placed outside the grill of the two cells, and the corridor light was always on, there was really little relief from either heat or light, and the mosquitoes continued to buzz and bite. On 15 August, Indian Independence Day, some Pathans among their guards furtively brought them a delicious chicken dish and some grapes. Otherwise, their sojourn in Peshawar was hot and humiliating. But Dilip had anticipated much worse. ‘I expected to be tortured day in and day out,' he remembers, ‘so everything was a bonus.'

On the fourth or fifth day after their initial escape, the three men were once again handcuffed, shackled and blindfolded, and loaded into two vehicles. Again they were not told where they were going. Soon they were out of town, on a highway, going God knows where. When they pulled over, Dilip wondered if they were going to be lined up and shot. Despite his confidence in Usman, he couldn't get the idea out of his mind. He had read in a Western comic that you never hear the shot that kills you. But the stop was simply a bathroom break and a halt for tea. After a few more hours on the road, they drove through the gates of No. 3 Provost and Security Flight in Rawalpindi and their blindfolds were removed.

There they were, back in that old, familiar place, but they recognized no one. Their comrades had disappeared and the whole staff had changed. ‘Where has everyone gone?' asked Dilip.