‘The sound of boots was terrifying’

After a 22-hour long wait for the Northwest Airlines flight at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, I was tired. All I wanted to do was to get on to the flight and sleep all through the journey to Mumbai. I even called my wife, Farheen (25), and asked her to cook some special Indian food.

The security procedure at the airport was tedious, especially the personal interviews where 12 of us were asked pointed questions about our work and what we had been doing for the past month. They also confiscated mobile phones and sim cards belonging to all of us. Once on the plane, we found a number of seats vacant, and decided to make ourselves comfortable. A number of us exchanged seats, as did many of the other passengers.

Many of us being frequent-fliers, knew all about keeping our seat belts on, and not using mobile phones. My laptop, which I never use during a flight, was tucked away safely in the overhead baggage hold.

I fell asleep, and a while later, when I woke up, I was told that the flight was heading back to Amsterdam because of a technical problem. Eleven of us and another Muslim man were singled out and separated from the rest of the passengers. We were handcuffed on the flight, in front of 149 other passengers. It was extremely humiliating. My hands are still sore because of the tight handcuffs.

The nightmare did not end there. They refused to speak to us or give any reason for detaining us. They interviewed us separately, searched our baggage thoroughly and took individual photographs. We were then put into 3 X 3 feet windowless cells, where we could hear the rhythmic clack-clack of the boots of the guards on patrol duty. It was a terrifying sound for us —  prisoners in an unfamiliar land. I had never been to even a police station in Mumbai.

Later we were transferred to a bigger cell and an advocate told us that we had been remanded in three-day custody. Those among us with diabetes and heart problems suffered the worst. My brother Salman was given five minutes to take a bath, and that too in the presence a guard and a closed-circuit camera — a degrading experience for any human being.

Noor Mohammad Batliwala, who suffers from claustrophobia, broke down and begged them to give him some space. My father-in-law, Farookh Hashmi, a heart patient, begged several times for water. Fear made us lose even our appetite. We were offered tea and bread, but none of us could eat.

When we were finally released, and sent to the hotel, the only thing we did was huddle together and cry for hours. I hope no other Indian has to go through this experience ever again.

We were sent back to Mumbai, with three Dutch escorts. What was nice was that they didn’t behave awkwardly with us, and were quite friendly. In fact they were so excited about their visit to India that they even asked us about the nice places to go to. By the end of the journey, we gave them our contact numbers and offered to take them around the city in our cars.

As told to Gouri Shah and Deepa Suryanarayan