Author: Anand Bodh
Publication: The Times of India
Date: August 29, 2008
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Militants_said_we_will_kill_you_Hostages/articleshow/3415072.cms
"Unhone aate hi uncle ko goli maar di.
Hum sab dar gaye aur kitchen mein chale gaye. Phir terrorists ne hum sab ko
peechhe ke kamre mein bandh kar diya (As soon as they came in, they shot uncle.
We panicked and ran into the kitchen. Then we were locked in a room),"
recalled Sheetal.
It was just the beginning of a nightmare for
Billu Ram's four kids, his wife and brother. "Be prepared to die,"
was the repeated threat they heard from the three Pakistani fidayeen for the
next several hours, most of which they spent crying and cowering in fear.
And dead the kids would have been, had it not been for the presence of mind
and bravery of Billu Ram's brother.
"One of the terrorists asked uncle Tarsem
(Billu Ram's brother) to send one of us out of the room," said Sheetal,
Billu Ram's eldest daughter. "But when he came in, he bolted the door
quickly from inside and secured it by placing a cot in front of it. The terrorists
went wild and fired through the door. That was when our mother got injured."
she said. "We cried out of fright and fear that something might happen
to her."
What emerges clearly is that the three men,
eventually brought down by the soldiers, wouldn't have batted an eyelid before
pumping bullets into the children had they got past the barricaded door.
Billu Ram's four children, Sheetal (9), Ashad
(7), Kajal (4) and Vipin (2) would never be able to forget the sight of the
fidayeen who burst in, shut them in a room, and, when their uncle tried to
secure them by bolting that room from inside, began firing wildly, bullets
ripping through the wooden door. They will never be able to erase from memory
the sight of their mother writhing in pain as blood drained out of her wound
after a bullet hit her leg. For most part, the children just cried.
"Woh hamein maarne ke liye bolte aur
chup karne ke liye thappad bhi maarte, (They would threaten us and even slap
us)," she said, forming her words hazily, through her drowsiness and
exhaustion. The pain of separation from her mother recovering in hospital
evident in her eyes.
For the family, the morning had begun innocously.
"Subah ek uncle aaye thhey toh chacha ne darwaza khol diya," said
Sheetal. "Lekin unke peechhe teen militant bhi hamare ghar me aa gaye
(There were three militants behind him)," she recalled. That was the
first moment of an 18-hour trauma that gripped Billu Ram's family, locked
in a room, wounded and hungry, with bullets and grenades flying around them.
They will never be able to forget that between
the seven of them, all they had during the 19 hours of terror was just one
glass of water, with the fidayeen raining bullets and lobbing grenades at
the security forces seemingly at will.
Billu Ram's brother, Tarsem, said, "After
the terrorists barged in, one of them reached for the first floor while two
of them remained on the ground floor with us. We went into the kitchen, but
they got us out and made us line up. They asked how many of us were in the
house. I told them there was my sister-in-law Sunita, wife Ritu, and four
children.
"I pleaded with them to at least let
the kids go as they were terrified. But they refused," Tarsem said, adding,
"They talked with each other in some alien language; I couldn't follow
it." But he could make out that they had got there well prepared: they
had with them ammunition and grenades in sacks as well as eatables.
None of them had even a morsel the entire
day and the only thing they had was a glass of water between the seven of
them. Relief came late in the night, said Sheetal, when Army jawans got them
out of the house around one in the night and took their injured mother to
a hospital.
