Return To Asia Yields Rumors, Little More Jane Schelly Believes She May Never Know Fate Of Her Kidnapped Husband

After two frustrating months and thousands of miles of searching through southwest Asia, Jane Schelly returned to a Spokane elementary school last week to resume her life as a physical education teacher.

She still doesn’t know the fate of her husband, neuropsychologist Donald Hutchings, and the three other Western tourists kidnapped 26 months ago in the Himalayan foothills.

“I think that they are probably not alive,” said Schelly in her office near the gymnasium of Arlington Elementary School. “But I think there’s a high probability I’ll never know for sure.”

The 42-year-old Spokane Valley resident spent most of her summer in India and Pakistan, trying to keep the people of those countries, and the rest of the world, from forgetting the four hostages.

She met with government leaders and diplomats, Muslim leaders and Hindu pilgrims, journalists and shepherds. She passed out leaflets and matchbooks that promise a reward for any information about the hostages’ fate.

She talked with villagers throughout wartorn Kashmir, who listened with sympathy.

“They have members of their families missing, too,” Schelly said. “People who have disappeared after a shootout with the military or security police, or have been taken by the militants, or are fighting with the insurgents.”

Hutchings, Britons Keith Mangan and Paul Wells, and German Dirk Hasert were among six men taken prisoner by a group of armed guerrillas while trekking through Kashmir. Schelly and other women who were traveling with the men were released, but the guerrillas, who called themselves Al-Faran, demanded the release of jailed Kashmiri separatists in exchange for the men.

One of the captives, John Childs of Connecticut, escaped, and a Norwegian hostage, Hans Christian Ostro, was beheaded by the guerrillas. The Indian government refused to trade, and Al-Faran has not contacted the government since December 1995.

Captured militants thought to have ties to Al-Faran have told Indian police of reports the hostages were killed that December or in January 1996. But searches of areas where the killings allegedly took place have not turned up any bodies.

Schelly heard heartening stories and tantalizing rumors during her travels through Kashmir.

She visited a village where the hostages were held in the fall of 1995. “They showed me the field where they played cricket and soccer. They said Hans Christian Ostro didn’t eat meat. That was true. He was a vegetarian,” she said.

In August, a religious leader said he knew a man who saw the hostages in July 1996. But the man had since been killed.

“I asked, ‘How can I believe this?’ I was told, ‘Because his holiness said so.”’

Near the end of her trip, a man said he had a relative in another village who saw the hostages in late June and early July 1996. If true, that would negate the stories of their death six months earlier.

Schelly wanted to go to that village and meet with the man’s relative. But a high government official was traveling in Kashmir, and the roads were closed for security. The next day, she had to leave India.

The journey had its highlights. On July 4, the two-year anniversary of the kidnapping, a top Muslim religious leader in Kashmir asked for information about the hostages during sabbath prayers in Srinagar’s main mosque.

“He said (the kidnapping) was hurting the Kashmiri people and hurting the Muslim faith,” Schelly recalled.

Journalists throughout Asia wrote about the search for the four hostages, keeping pressure on the government. Kashmir’s economy relies heavily on tourism.

“A Japanese television and radio crew told us a 747 a day flies from Japan to India with tourists,” Schelly said. “They asked us if Kashmir was a safe place. Our answer was ‘No.”’

Much of the time, however, was spent dealing with the tangled bureaucracy of national and state governments and competing investigative agencies that don’t share their information.

“The lack of coordination and communication surprised me,” she said. “I had one police official tell me ‘We have leads and clues that none of the other agencies have ever heard of.’ He actually bragged about that.”

Meetings with officials were scheduled, then postponed. Trips to certain villages were restricted to certain days, and on those days, the roads were sometimes closed and the journeys canceled.

Finally, in late August, she returned to Spokane to begin the school year.

Her third day back at school, she received a copy of a brief article from the Indian Express, a New Delhi newspaper, reporting that officials in Kashmir had re-established contact with Al-Faran. Unnamed government sources hinted a swap of prisoners for hostages was in the works.

The next day, a competing newspaper, the Times of India, quoted unnamed sources as saying no such contact has occurred. Such a swap is out of the question, those sources said.

It was, Schelly said, typical of the roller coaster she has ridden for the last 26 months. She suspects the second report is true - the Indian government has adamantly opposed such a swap.

But it was one more reminder of the difficulties finding answers in India.

“I used to say, ‘If they are alive, how could I not hear anything?”’ she said. “Now I think it’s possible they could be alive and word would never get out.”

“That’s why I will go back again next summer.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 color)