Courage. Commitment.Compassion.
Three simple words that best personify Neerja Bhanot.
Three simple words that explain why this young and vibrant girl earned world-wide acclaim for her courage and gallant actions.
Three simple words that show how at the tender age of 23 and just 2 days before her birthday, Neerja laid down her life, while saving hundreds of others.
On the morning of September 5, 1986, Pan Am Flight 73 landed in Karachi. It had arrived from Mumbai and, had nothing gone wrong, would have departed for Frankfurt and onward to New York City. The flight was carrying, among members of other nationalities, Indians, Germans, Americans, and Pakistanis.
Unfortunately, the flight was hijacked while it was parked on the tarmac at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi.
Four heavily-armed terrorists, dressed as airport security guards, entered the aircraft while firing shots from an automatic weapon and seized control of the plane.
This is the story of Neerja Bhanot, the senior flight attendant on board, who helped a number of passengers escape. She was murdered while shielding three children from terrorist fire, less than 25 hours before her 23rd birthday.
After the terrorists boarded the plane, Neerja alerted the cockpit crew, who escaped through an overhead hatch in the cockpit. As the senior-most crew member remaining on board, this left Neerja in charge. One of the terrorists asked the flight crew to collect and hand over the passports of all passengers on board. When Neerja realised that the primary targets of the terrorists were American passengers, she hid their passports – even discarding some of them down the rubbish chute. From a total of 41 American passengers, only 2 were killed.
After holding passengers and crew members hostage for 17 hours on the runway, the terrorists opened fire. Neerja stayed on the plane to help passengers escape, even though she could have been the first to leave. She was shot while shielding three children from the bullets being fired by the terrorists.
Most of us will never find ourselves in a high-pressure situation, facing life or death the way Neerja did. True bravery emerges in the face of fear. We might never know what Neerja was thinking or feeling during those terrible hours of the hijacking, but we do know that she chose to respond to the actions of the terrorists with exceptional grace, courage, and grit. Of the 380 passengers and crew members on Flight 73, 20 were killed.
While many others were injured, they did survive – in no small part due to the actions of a 22-year-old flight attendant who chose compassion over cowardice and performed her duty till the very end.
Neerja Bhanot’s family suffered an unbearable loss when they lost their only daughter.
“Neerja was the ‘laado’ of the family, the youngest and most pampered. My parents had wished for her, and in a news article after her death, my father had mentioned how, when she was born on September 7, 1962, the maternity ward matron here at Chandigarh hospital rang up to inform, it’s a girl. To her surprise, he gave her double thanks, for Neerja was a prayer answered after two sons,” recalls Aneesh, her brother.
As her father remembers her,
“Neerja was a very sensitive, deeply affectionate and an extremely decent person who believed in sharing with her people all her joys but not the jolts. She had well defined principles and there was little room for compromise in that area.”
Despite their irreplaceable loss, her parents, Rama and Harish Bhanot, soldiered on, and even found a fitting way to honour Neerja’s memory. With the insurance money that they received after her death and an equal contribution from Pan Am, they set up the Neerja Bhanot Pan Am Trust. Through the Trust, they present two awards of Rs. 1,50,000 every year – one to an Indian woman who faces social injustice but overcomes it and helps other women in similar situations, and one to honour an airline crew member who acts beyond the call of duty. There could hardly have been a better way to keep Neerja’s memory alive.
For her actions on the day of the hijacking, Neerja Bhanot was posthumously awarded the Ashok Chakra, India’s highest peacetime military decoration for the “most conspicuous bravery or some daring or pre-eminent valour or self-sacrifice”, and the Tamgha-e-Insaniyat, awarded by the Pakistan government for showing incredible kindness. She also posthumously received multiple awards for her courage from the United States government.
Worldwide Views
Neerja, a flight attendant on the Pan Am hijacking at Karachi gave us inspiration by self-sacrifice. When terrorists came aboard, she warned the plane's pilots so they could escape, and their quick getaway made the hijacking fail because the terrorists were stuck on the ground.
In the final bloodbath at the end of the hijacking, Neerja was killed. It was two days before her twenty-third birthday. Not only had she assured the failure of the hijacking by preventing the plane from getting off the ground, she also saved the lives of hostages in those long hours of incarceration. She hid the passports of American passengers from the Arabic speaking gunmen, giving them a chance to escape the homicidal wrath of the intruders.
She was, at so early an age, the senior flight purser. But Neerja, who radiated both cheer and concern, has left a mark on everyone who knew her and many of the rest of us.
Blitz
October 4, 1986.
World's bravest woman
A Symmes township man returned Monday from a 17 hour ordeal as a captive of Palestinian hijackers to an emotional homecoming of yellow ribbons, joyful tears and kisses from his wife, family and friends.
Sekhar Mitra survived the harrowing episode in Karachi, with only a sore knee, where a terrorist hit him with the butt of a gun for not holding his hands high enough. Within Mitra's tale of terror, a second story emerged, more tragic and heart warming than any of his other recollections. It involved a young Pan Am flight attendant, Neerja, a 23 year old Indian, whose cool head and actions saved Mitra's life.
"She was fantastic, the only real hero in the incident," Mitra said.
From the start of the planes' takeover, it was obvious to Mitra that Americans were the terrorists' primary target. "Their leader passed by our seat several times, pointing his guns at us, saying, are you American citizens? Do you have American passports? But before they could be discovered, Neerja, the flight attendant already had covertly gathered all the American passports and hidden them aboard the plane.
"I still can't believe she did that," said Mitra. "If they had found that out, they would have killed her immediately, I'm sure."
The flight attendant smiled throughout the incident despite the fear surrounding her - and that infuriated the terrorists - Mitra said. They often pointed their guns at the young woman, accusing her of carrying on secret communication with the passengers. If the terrorists knew only how right they were.
When the lights in the jet were extinguished and the ordeal approached its bloody end, Neerja again played a life saving role, Mitra said. The first reaction to the darkness came when a terrorist exploded a pair of grenades in the plane. Then a machine gun strafed the passengers. As Mitra ran to the exit door, Neerja, her uniform covered with blood from a abdominal wound, stopped Mitra before he got out of the door. "I was going to jump out but she said it was a wing exit and it would be too long a fall for me. She directed me to the rear exit and I got out" Mitra said. He later saw a man carrying Neerja in his arms out of the plane. The young flight attendant died a few hours later.
The Star
Pakistan September 5, 1991
Neerja Bhanot: In retrospect
By Mohammad Aziz Haji Dossa
To Heroine Neerja
Harindranath Chattopadhyaya
You have become historic
And made heroism heroic!
Your valour even hallows
Great martyrs on the gallows'
Even Death itself, 0 Sweet!
Must befalling at your feet!
To you the salutation, Neerja!
Of the whole nation.
Critical situations bring out the real YOU. Neerja chose to fight against terrorism rather than being quite, eventually losing her life.
Why? We all have this word with us in some form or other, if you understand the question, you will know the answer.
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