National identity on the tarmac
Stealing the show from Pakistan's nuclear scientists in the run-up to the revenge blasts in Chagai was never going to be easy. But three Baloch nationalists gave it a try anyway, and their attempt was heart-rending both in its amateurishness and its denouement.
Their stage was a PIA Fokker plane bound for Karachi from Gawadar, in the extreme southwest corner of Pakistan. Brandishing pistols, the three young men stormed into the cockpit fifteen minutes into the flight and ordered the pilot to take the plane to India. The captain made as if to comply, and told the hijackers that he was landing in Rajasthan's Jodhpur for re-fuelling on way to New Delhi. He touched down, instead, in Pakistan's own Hyderabad.
The "poor and illiterate-looking" – as one passenger had it – Baloch men fell for the gambit. The passengers too were stumped for a while; some of them horrified at being in India, prime enemy territory in these frenzied nuclear times, started reciting Quranic verses.