Whenever Sanjay Dhital and his wife Rosina have taken a flight in the past year, they've had goose bumps. It is especially bad when cabin attendants bring around the food. Sanjay says he looks around nervously half expecting a masked man to run down the aisle shouting "Get down." Sanjay worked for a Japanese medical charity in Peshawar and was flying back from Kathmandu just after getting married last year when his Indian Airlines flight IC814 was hijacked just as the food was being served. "I have tried to avoid Indian Airlines since then because the Kashmir problem was the reason for the hijack and it has not been solved," he told us.

Last week, The Times of India reported that one of the hijackers of IC814 had been spotted in Kathmandu. For many here the report was a sharp reminder of the bias and scape-goating of Nepal by the Indian media last year in the aftermath of the hijacking. Nepalis need no reminding. The hijack and the prolonged negotiations that led to the release had a political fallout that added to already worsening Indo-Pakistan relations and raised tensions in the region. But what hassled many Nepalis was the 'regional superpower press' (in sheer number and sound bytes) putting the blame squarely on a small neighbouring country, and accusing it of harbouring Islamic militants and other sundry subversives. In Nepali eyes, the main culprit was the Zee News TV channel, which even had a computer simulation of militants getting off a PIA plane and boarding the IA aircraft parked side by side, like passengers at a New Delhi bus terminal. Indian magazines carried pictures of madrassas in the tarai with captions saying they were training centres for Islamic terrorists.

It suddenly became characteristic of a newly jingoistic Indian state and an equally obliging media that while things were not better managed at home it was better to deflect attention. Press coverage of the hijack distorted facts, lacked objectivity, vilified an innocent and reduced the crisis itself into a media event, all in the rush to beam the first breaking story. A year after the drama, media critics even in India are now admitting that the hijack was part and parcel of the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, and Nepal just got caught in the middle. The response of the Indian state machinery was to distract attention from its own long-term failures in Kashmir and its initial bungling in reacting to the hijack by maligning a conveniently weak neighbour. So the story was not about intelligence failure, or about squandered options when the airliner stood on the tarmac at Amritsar airport. And what hurt Nepalis most were the Zee News items quoting "intelligence sources" that the hijackers had brandished Kalashnikovs even before the plane entered Indian airspace and that a Nepali was
one of the hijackers; there was no correction after the reports proved false.

The appearance of a story in the press is itself conspiratorial. Hijacks are conspiratorial, and so were the negotiations that ended the hijack-no one has a clue as to what actually transpired, how much money changed hands and who was involved. But there's a stake in the fallout as well. Who benefits from adverse media coverage? It is possible that the budget for Indian intelligence gathering in Nepal has grown by leaps and bounds? There are those who benefit from a perceived heightened security threat. Then there was the nearly six-month long haggling over improving the security of Kathmandu airport. Nepalis did not want to allow Indian airlines security checks on its "soil", and finally agreed to have a special ramp where passengers would be frisked. The added security has made it much more of a hassle to travel Indian Airlines, compared to other airlines. But most passengers have the attitude: better safe than sorry.

Airport manager Rajesh Raj Dali says Kathmandu airport's security is now much tighter. "We're now as good as any airport anywhere," Dali told us in his office overlooking the runway. "We are providing airlines all security services they have asked for." The airport now has a sterilised passenger hold where even employees-except those helping boarding and authorised security personnel-are not allowed to mix with passengers. There is close-circuit television surveillance of all sensitive areas.

Checked-in baggage also passes through several screening processes: X-rayed first, and then screened for a second time upon request of airlines. In addition it also allows some airlines-upon request-to get passengers to identify their checked-in baggage on the apron before boarding. In addition to the hand baggage screening at the terminal, the Indian Airlines' special ramp is where security personnel do a thorough body frisk. Pakistan International Airlines also has body frisking, but does that on the threshold of the aircraft itself. Asked about inconvenience to passengers from long queues on the apron, Dali says: "There were problems when these new security measures were introduced but we have now streamlined it and we don't harass passengers. We haven't got any complaints from any airlines."

Another post-hijack development is the institutionalisation of the National Civil Aviation Security Committee that is headed by Nepal's Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation, and the formation of similar security committees in all airports around the country. One of the greatest casualties of the hijacking was Nepal's tourism industry. More than 30 percent of the tourists in Nepal are high-spending Indian holidaymakers who used to splurge in the restaurants, shopping centres and casinos of Kathmandu and Pokhara. From January to June, there were no Indian Airlines flights at all which cost the Indian carrier an estimated IRs 2.5 million a day. But the damage to Nepal's tourism industry was colossal, not just because Indians were not coming, but also because a third of non-Indian tourists still fly in via New Delhi, Calcutta or Banaras. Luckily, tourism managed to recoup some of the losses with a healthy autumn season despite the Indian numbers being down, which had more to do with new rules about only Indians and Nepalis with passports or citizenship papers being allowed to fly between the two countries. Even though the flights have resumed, and the security is tight, the fallout from the negative media coverage in India is going to take a long time to undo.