It is all very fine being brave after an incident, but we had been brought up to believe that telling the story was most important. Let the reader decide for himself, just stick to the facts only. So it was on the 10th of September, 1976, that my chief reporter rushed me to the Lahore Airport to cover the hijacking of an Indian Airline Boeing 737 from its scheduled Delhi-Bombay flight. Our legendary photographer F.E. Chaudhry, trust that great man, was already there, as were scores of others. FE’s huge telescopic camera pointed toward the aircraft as he waited for that special moment.

Our chief reporter had suggested that I also go there to help out two reporters already there. So it was that I reached the airport on my little motorcycle. It was clear that the aircraft had been parked far away from the terminal and from prying eyes. The place was swarming with army commandos. The Press had been huddled into one corner and there seems little that one could do but wait. Nobody knew what was going on. But then I was always lucky in getting an exclusive story every now and then. In those days, journalists were blessed with a byline only for an exclusive story, otherwise it was merely ‘by a staff reporter’.

As I lounged around searching for clues, an Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) captain by the name of Shahid (at least that is what he told me) approached me and asked if I was from The Pakistan Times.

“Yes, how can I help?”

“Suppose we drive you to the aircraft to interview the hijackers?”

My eyes lit up and reason flew away.

“Do you have a photographer with you?”

I pointed to FE Chaudhry’s assistant Ghiyas Chaudhry.

“Good, he can also come along”.

“No way”, retorted Ghiyas, “I have small children”.

I told the ISI man that I could operate the camera, and so armed with 36 frames, I was driven through a side terminal and dropped about 200 yards from where, far away, stood a bearded hijacker with a strange-looking pistol.

As I confidently walked towards the Indian aircraft I could see in the tall reeds on the sides dozens of commandos disguised with grass and leaves and grease paint on their faces. As soon as I approached the first bearded hijacker screamed: “Hands up” and thrust a pistol to my head.

“Who are you?” he shouted.

“I am a journalist,” I immediately responded.

“Show me your card,” he immediately barked back.

I pulled out my crumbling press card. He looked at it and said: “What a filthy press card”.

“What do you expect? We are pretty poor lot,” I responded in chaste Lahori Punjabi. It was more a plea for clemency. The bearded hijacker smiled and took the pistol away.

I immediately got to work and started taking pictures. It occurred to me then that these hijackers were pretty amateur in their conduct. I was taken up the staircase and showed that it was a real hijacking. My thoughts at that moment were on the waiting commandos outside and I prayed to myself: “Ya Allah, let the commando attack come only when I have left”.

But as I talked to them they seem a pretty happy lot. They even posed for pictures. By this time I had exhausted my 36 frames and had sufficient material for my story. I told their leader that I had got my story and pictures and must leave them. They got a bit suspicious and asked how I would go. “I will walk to the airport,” I spoke with contrived confidence. He waved his pistol and I, for a second, thought he might shoot. But he smiled and said: “OK, go then”.

That was the longest 200 yards I have ever walked but out of the grass a jeep rushed towards me and Captain Shahid shouted that I get on. Little did I know that the worst part was yet to come.

I was taken to a special portion of the airport where a super aggressive Brig T.M., the Pakistani chief commando, asked me to sit down otherwise they would shoot me. No sooner had he said it that at least six soldiers clicked their guns. It was scary as I was asked to shut up and the camera was confiscated. I was arrested and made to sit in a corner. Any attempt to complain was met with rattling guns. I had lost my photographs and was not free to write my story.

But fate had better things in store. This Brig TM, as everyone called him, and some senior soldiers were discussing that the prime minister was frantically wanting pictures of the hijacking immediately. Their dilemma was that any studio in the Lahore Cantonment would take at least 24 hours to develop the entire film reel. That was opening needed.

“No worry Sir, let me take it to our newspaper office and you will have beautiful huge prints within half an hour,” I suggested. They fell for it, feeling very relieved.

So in the same army jeep I went with Ghiyas Chaudhry with a major and Captain Shahid, with orders that if they do ‘any hacky panky’ shoot them. As we drove to office I whispered in Ghiyas’s ear: “Use two papers for every print and throw the lower one in a covered waste paper basket. Once they leave develop the wasted ones and give them to me”. In the dark room, the needful was done and two very happy army officers left with a promise to give us only two pictures the next day. They even gave me a lift to the airport where I sat on my motorcycle and rushed to the dark room.

By then my prize was in a huge envelope and I escaped with it to my mother’s house. There I wrote my story and went to the chief sub-editor’s house and narrated the entire story. Mr Q.Z. Malik was an immensely popular journalist and he promised to do the needful, with some parting advice: “Get lost and do not mention it to anyone. I will do my job”.

The next day our newspaper was full of photographs of the hijackers and a lucid story of what had transpired. It even went into an extra print order. But at seven in the morning there was a knock on my Gulberg flat and the same Captain Shahid arrested me and I was taken to the ISI camp office on Lawrence Road. I was made to sit in a chair as a bright light hit my eyes.

“Do you know you could have damaged national interest?” That amazed me for I recollect telling him that ‘public interest’ is above ‘national interest’. The chief there walked up to me and told me I was a dreaming romantic.

“Had the men been ours, we would have got into a lot of trouble”. That did make me think but it sounded beyond the realm of the possible.

By then, I was to learn later, our chief reporter and our Islamabad bureau chief, H.K. Burki, had called on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. On being told about me it seems the ISI was instructed to release me. They were in a bit of a shock. But I returned to be scolded by all my superiors. Privately all of them said: “Good story, but never again take such a risk”. To my surprise a month later at the airport I met the prime minister, who walked up to me and said: “Majid, bloody good story. Keep it up”.