The Hindu : International / India & World : BBC's hostage drama with an Indian twist

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Wednesday, Mar 16, 2005

International

International - India & World

BBC's hostage drama with an Indian twist

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, MARCH 15. The BBC believes terrorism in Kashmir still has enough potential to yield a long yarn about a likely threat to Britain from the militants.

On Monday night, the BBC showed an hour-long drama in which a fictional Kashmiri "terrorist group," demanding the release of its activists from British and Indian jails, descends on a hotel in Central London and takes a large number of hostages creating a national crisis.

The unidentified group, we are told, has also planted a "bomb" in a busy street and threatened to set it off if its demands are not met.

As Ministers ponder on how to deal with the situation, the "terrorists" agree to release the women and children in their custody but set a deadline for their demands to be accepted failing which they threaten to start shooting the male hostages one by one.

There are frequent references to India and at one point there is a discussion over whether some of the terrorists' supporters, who have been rounded by the police, could perhaps be subjected to torture to make them squeal — and one option is to send them to India for interrogation as Britain's own security services may not like to dirty their hands.

In the end, the whole idea is dropped and as the deadline ends the terrorists start shooting the hostages. The drama ends with special forces storming the hotel, but by then 50 of the 100 hostages are already dead. The rescue team, however, does manage to shoot all the terrorists.

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BBC's hostage drama with an Indian twist