Bhujel in the last photograph he sent to his family from jail and (right) his wife, Devaki. Picture by Chinlop Fudong Lepcha

Kalimpong, Feb. 6: For the past eight years, Dilip Kumar Bhujel has been in jail for his role in facilitating the 1999 hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar. However, during that period, every time he spoke or wrote to his family he would promise to return soon.

A day after Bhujel and two others — Abdul Latif and Yusuf Nepali — were handed life terms by a Patiala special court for their complicity in the hijacking, his wife, Devaki, still believes in his innocence.

When The Telegraph caught up with Devaki in her two-storied mud house in the idyllic village of Sindebung, about 5km from here, the 30-something woman had just returned from the bi-weekly haat in Kalimpong, where she sells home-grown vegetables.

“I have to do this to feed our three school-going children,” she said.

Bhujel and Devaki have been married for nearly 20 years. Their eldest daughter, Dipika, is preparing for her higher secondary examination, while another daughter, Binita, will sit for her Class X exams this year. Son, Yogesh, studies in Class IX.

“Ever since we watched the news about his (Bhujel’s) sentence at our neighbour’s house yesterday, Dipika has been crying. The last time my husband spoke to her was some time in December. He had told her he would be back home by March,” said Devaki.

The children were not at home, but Devaki described Bhujel as a caring husband and dotting father.

“He was a farmer, but would also take up contracts for road repairs and other small projects, mainly from the DGHC. He used to worry about the future of our children and wanted to go abroad to earn money for their education,” she said.

“And after he met Yusuf Khan (alias Yusuf Nepali), he became more insistent on going abroad. Yusuf, he used to tell me, was a nice man who had promised to send him to Dubai,” Devaki added.

Yusuf had come to their house only once, said Devaki.

“On March 31, 2000, some Hindi-speaking people (actually, a team of CBI officials) came to our house in the afternoon looking for my husband. I thought they were engineers overseeing the construction of a road above our village. Bhujel was out, but they refused to come in and wait. I told them that he would come back around 4pm and they were about to leave when Bhujel returned.”

Bhujel was immediately picked up and taken to the Kalimpong police station. “I went to the police station the next day, and the officers there told me he would be released soon,” Devaki said.

Since then it has been one long wait for Devaki and her children. The special court yesterday found Bhujel, Latif and Nepali guilty of arranging the stay, passports, tickets and arms for the hijackers in Kathmandu, from where the flight had taken off for Delhi on December 24, 1999.

Devaki claimed that her husband had never been anywhere beyond Siliguri. “He was never away from home. The one time that he had gone to Siliguri was to bring back a body,” she said.