Kashmir hostage crisis nears its climax

A fortnight, two at the most, and the 26-month old suspense will end -- the world will know whether the Kashmir hostages, abducted by militants in July, 1995, are alive or dead.

To recap, the Jammu and Kashmir police had last week exhumed a skeleton, believed to belong to one of the four abducted foreigners, from a grave in Akingam village, Ananatnag district. The tip-off had come from captured foreign mercenaries of the Pakistan-based Harkat ul-Ansar who claimed the hostages had been killed late last year. This, they insisted, had come after the Al-Faran militants (the group, an offshoot of the Pakistani organisation, which claimed responsibility for the kidnapping) had been refused permission to cross over to Pakistan.

The exhumed remains have been flown to the Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory for advanced DNA testing. Preliminary tests, home ministry sources say, show the body could indeed be one of the British hostages.

Now, the authorities are waiting for the clincher -- blood and tissue samples from the hostages's relatives which would establish the truth beyond doubt.

A team of Scotland Yard experts, meanwhile, is already on its way to New Delhi to help the investigation.

The CFSL's initial tests had shown that the body 'closely approximated' one of the hostages. Officials said among the indicative parameters were the height and weight.

"The skeleton was exhumed on definite information," a home ministry official said, "We are proceeding on the assumption it belongs to one of the hostages."

The government, meanwhile, is waiting for a technical formality before contacting the British authorities. A formal request has to come from JK Director General of Police Gurbachan Jagat. This would be followed by a request from the external affairs ministry to the British government, requesting the co-operation of the hostages's relatives.

All along, rumours of the four hostages -- of the total six abducted, one had managed to escape, while militants beheaded another -- being killed and buried in the higher reaches of Pir Panjal had been floating around. In fact, the police had been forced to undertake body-hunts in the mountains more than once.

If the DNA test identifies the body as one of the hostage's, investigating officials say the chances of the others being alive are pretty slim.

"The identification," they say, "will give us an idea about the truth."

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EXTERNAL LINK:
Men are seen alive and well