The Nation: Escalator Tragedy; Stairway to Death

The countrywide seizures of counterfeit Indian currency with face value of crores reveal a diabolic design by Pakistan's ISI to finance its proxy war and undermine the Indian economy.

"Arre sahib, I have been careful never to fly. Why take a chance? We don't understand technology. Our pilots have the mentality of DTC bus drivers. The airport fellows are no better. Look what happened to that poor child."
-- Police inspector at the Delhi airport police station, the day after Jyotsna Jethani's death

If you alight from the escalator at the arrival terminal in the east wing of Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport, turn right. Take no more than a single step. Then bend down and look for what was once -- probably when the Otis UB 44 escalator was bought in 1986 -- a shiny red button. It's fairly dirty and discoloured, the result of age and, as a hanger-on tells you, pani ki cheentein (splashes of water). There is no sign anywhere to tell you what it is meant to do. Airports Authority of India (AAI) officials insist the button has a twin, presumably equally unmarked, on the upper landing. They also claim that if you press either button the escalator comes to an instant stop. The point is: if you can find these buttons you must be Sherlock Holmes.

What's the truth

AAI Says

A passenger's bag got trapped. He caused the damage and ran away.

Otis' maintenance contract was still operational.

Medical relief team was there in 10 minutes.

Helped Jyotsna's family through the post-mortem process

Others say

Other passengers say they saw nothing. Undermine bag-strap theory.

Otis says contract had expired on September 30.

The victims say it took half-hour; no first-aid kit.

Jethanis say they had to pay a bribe of Rs.3,000 for the report.

It was at 2.58 a.m. on Monday, December 13, that Jyotsna Jethani stepped onto the 30-step escalator. Twenty minutes earlier, the seven-year-old girl had arrived by Air-India's flight AI 720 from Dubai. Accompanied by her mother, grandparents, uncle and aunt, she was here for a family occasion. Rajesh, the uncle who was holding her little hand, had just got married to Vera, a Russian woman he had met in Moscow. Now they were here for an Indian-style ceremony.

The Jethanis were halfway down when they heard the commotion. Apparently those ahead of them were finding it difficult to get off. "Run upstairs," a voice screamed. A panicky Rajesh turned and started to run up. In no time, he was beaten by the speed of the moving steps. The Jethanis were getting drawn towards the base. "All of us fell," remembers Rajesh, "as did the others on the escalator."

There was a gaping hole between the comb plate -- the groove the final step hits -- and the landing platform. Jyotsna slipped headlong into it. Rajesh's feet got stuck but he managed to pull them out. His little niece didn't have a chance; she got sucked deeper and deeper. As the family screamed for someone to stop the escalator an airport watched dumbstruck. Immigration and customs personnel and other passengers were witness to the horrific sight of a small child desperately flailing her legs, crying for freedom. It came only with death.

Meanwhile, others had leapt across the crater. When his mother Usha, 55, slipped, Danish Nagpal extricated her only with the help of an unknown Sikh co-passenger. A computer engineer from Washington D.C., Danish was escorting his mother on a pilgrimage to Triveni, Allahabad. At the capital's Apollo Hospital, his mother's surgery behind him, he recalls the sight of her leg: "The comb plate sliced through the flesh. The gash was 6.5 in long, 2.5 in wide. Blood was pouring out."

Yet nothing, not even the view of his mother's bone, prepared Danish for Jyotsna. For something like half an hour, he tried to help her uncle and grandfather pull her out, he ran from official to official, asking for a doctor for his mother, some guardian angel, somebody in charge. The response was a series of blank stares: "All they said was 'I don't know, I'm from immigration.' 'I don't know, I'm from customs'. The immigration people kept stamping passports while this girl was dying."

It was a few minutes -- Otis officials say it must have been seconds; to Danish it seemed an eternity -- before Jyotsna's body was sufficiently enmeshed in the escalator for the gargantuan churner to grind to a halt. By about 3.20 a.m. the Jethanis and those aiding them, a couple of policemen included but still no airport official, had ripped apart the landing pad and the comb plate to create a gulf 2.5 ft wide. When they pulled out Jyotsna, "half her face had been smashed". Says an AAI engineer, "The machine, crudely put, must have chewed her up."

When a doctor arrived, he took one look and declared her dead. Danish now tried to do what he could for his mother. She had borne it with fortitude so far, being concerned for Jyotsna. The Nagpals asked in vain for a first-aid kit, even a piece of cloth.

At about 3.30 a.m. an AAI official casually asked them, "Shall I call an ambulance?" A rickety AAI ambulance took them to Apollo Hospital. Having reached there, the driver and his companion zoomed off, without so much as bothering to ask Danish if he had money or knew his way around.

That was a dark night -- and the following days have only been darker. Nobody has shed light on why the escalator failed. Two broad theories have emerged.

A passenger's handbag strap gets caught between the comb plate and the landing pad. He tries to yank it, maybe with help from others, and pulls up the whole metal plate.

The landing pad's screws are loose, maybe because of wear and tear, maybe because AAI janitors left them undone to make cleaning easier. A passenger accidentally displaces the pad.

The "strap theory" has many flaws. D.V. Gupta, AAI chairman, says the passenger ran away leaving his bag behind. Even if it be assumed that this man jumped across immigration, why hasn't the AAI used the baggage identification tag to find him?

Also, Danish and the Jethanis deny seeing any trapped bag. Says Rajesh: "I was misled by the local staff. So in a state of shock I made this statement to the police about the bag. But my father and family say nothing like that happened."

Backers of the "loose screws scenario" point to the AAI's culpability in not renewing Otis' annual maintenance contract after it expired on September 30. The reason? An elaborate tender process. On its part, Otis stresses its technicians paid "a goodwill maintenance visit on November 25" and found all well. Given, to quote Ashok Malhotra, senior gm, it controls "some 60 per cent of the 5,500-unit annual elevator and escalator market", Otis is worried. So too are users of India's 250 escalators.

For the immediate, a two-member AAI committee has submitted a report to the civil aviation minister, and three airport managers have been suspended. Amazingly, H.S. Bains, the director who runs the airport, is not among them.

Far from this hide and seek game between truth and cover-up, in Jodhpur sits Rajesh Jethani, the man who came home only because he wanted an Indian wedding. "I once fought a friend who had had some bad experiences in India," he says bitterly, "and who threw his Indian passport into the snow and drove his car over it ... I want to burn mine right here."

There is the bathos. There is the pathos. There will be the denouement. None of it will bring back Jyotsna Jethani.