Chennai: The annual anti-hijack drill at the Chennai airport on Tuesday turned out to be a comedy of errors.
The exercise coordinated by several agencies including CISF, Indian Coast Guard, Indian Army and the local police was supposed to test the airport's preparedness in handling an emergency if a hijacked passenger aircraft lands at the airport. It ended up being a series of mistakes which but for its grave import would have been a comic show.
To begin with, there was communication gap between the 'hijacker' (a Hindi-speaking CISF man) and the 'negotiator,' who couldn't speak Hindi. "Hijacker, hijacker," the negotiator, an intelligence officer, shouted into the microphone. And the reply was "Yes, Yes" followed by a few words in Hindi. The negotiator fumbled as he did not know the language and continued in English. The Hindi-speaking hijacker apparently didn't understand anything for the first few minutes.
While confusion prevailed in the control room, hijackers 'shot down' a hostage and the 'body' was thrown out of the bus used as a mock aircraft. "Yes", said the negotiator in response, "now don't harm anymore!"
An officer privy to the exercise later said the harm was already done as the whole drill turned out to be a "tamasha."
20/11/13 Arun Janardhanan/Times of India
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The exercise coordinated by several agencies including CISF, Indian Coast Guard, Indian Army and the local police was supposed to test the airport's preparedness in handling an emergency if a hijacked passenger aircraft lands at the airport. It ended up being a series of mistakes which but for its grave import would have been a comic show.
To begin with, there was communication gap between the 'hijacker' (a Hindi-speaking CISF man) and the 'negotiator,' who couldn't speak Hindi. "Hijacker, hijacker," the negotiator, an intelligence officer, shouted into the microphone. And the reply was "Yes, Yes" followed by a few words in Hindi. The negotiator fumbled as he did not know the language and continued in English. The Hindi-speaking hijacker apparently didn't understand anything for the first few minutes.
While confusion prevailed in the control room, hijackers 'shot down' a hostage and the 'body' was thrown out of the bus used as a mock aircraft. "Yes", said the negotiator in response, "now don't harm anymore!"
An officer privy to the exercise later said the harm was already done as the whole drill turned out to be a "tamasha."
20/11/13 Arun Janardhanan/Times of India
