Termed `hijacker’, hostage goes through more trauma

KATHMANDU, FEB 29: Remember Gajendra Tamrakar? He was the Nepalese passenger of the hijacked IA flight who was reported as being one of th...

KATHMANDU, FEB 29: Remember Gajendra Tamrakar? He was the Nepalese passenger of the hijacked IA flight who was reported as being one of the hijackers. While the world may have put the incident behind it, the label `hijacker’ is not something Tamrakar has been able to get rid of. And this Nepalese film actor has also not forgotten those who labelled him a hijacker.

At an unexpected meeting with him at the shooting of a Nepalese film in Kathmandu last week, Tamrakar said that he was ruined completely after the defamation by the TV channel and he was not going to rest in peace till he sued the channel. “Shouldn’t they pay me compensation for ruining me and humiliating me like this. They have left me dead,” he says.

Tamrakar, a popular comedian, has not been acting for the last two months after the hijacking and this is his first shoot after the incident. The main source of Tamrakar’s income is not films. In fact that is the case of most Nepalese actors given the size of the industry. “I used to earn my income as a dealer in pashmina shawls,” he says.

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When the plane was hijacked, Tamrakar was on one of his business trips to India. “But after the hijacking, no trader in Kathmandu is willing to let me deal with their goods. Tell me, will Indians refuse to trade with me if they knew that I was Tamrakar,” he asks. “I keep telling the Nepalese that there would not be any problems as my name has been cleared but they are not willing to take any risk,” says Tamrakar who is paying for a crime he never committed.

“At least they could have publicised the correction when they realised their mistake. I am an ordinary person. They are big,” he says. “I want to go to their office in Delhi. I will sue them, he says referring to the TV channel though he is not sure as to how he must go about it.

His voice is hoarse, and producer Neer Shah says that he lost his voice during the traumatic period after the hijacking. “He was reeling under the trauma of being a victim of hijacking and at the same time he was facing social isolation as the label of hijacker had stuck on him. We are as sad as India is about the hijacking but it is the false propaganda about Gajendra that has hurt us most,” says Shah.

The TV channel never bothered to retract or to apologise to the actor. They did not realise the implications of what they had done to a man by naming him hijacker, said Indian Ambassador K V Rajan. “And the one wish Tamrakar has now apart from that of suing the channel is to have a meeting with Rajan. I just want to see him and express my gratitude for understanding my trauma. He actually told visitors that he could not imagine what Tamrakar was going through after the defaming reports of the TV channel, Tamrakar recalls.

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Heavily built like a Sumo wrestler, Tamrakar says that he had made people laugh and now a cruel joke has been played on him. “My two sons ask me why I am called a hijacker while the fathers of their classmates are not given such names. Is it because you are fat, they ask me,” says Tamrakar. He says he has two sisters to marry off and his two brothers who are goldsmiths are being denied work by jewellers.

His story has many sympathisers in Nepal. Says Om Rana who manages the biggest casino in Kathmandu: Let him appeal to the people and all of us would pay his court bills if he were to sue the TV channel for defamation. “The people of Birat Nagar have already stopped transmission of the channel. If I fail to sue them I will see to it that this channel is boycotted in Nepal. Hurting me is like hurting every Nepalese,” he says.

“I am grateful to the Indian government for my freedom, but the media has left me dead. Why did they do this to me?,” he remonstrates.