Hostage’s Wife Hangs On To Threads Of Hope Today Marks 500th Day Of Captivity In India For Donald Hutchings

As Spokane school teacher Jane Schelly marks the 500th day of her husband’s captivity today in India, she must count the small successes to keep the fear from overtaking the flickering hope.

She has no new information about the whereabouts of psychologist Donald Hutchings or the three other Westerners kidnapped in July 1995; nothing more than a month ago, when she began a trip through India and Pakistan with relatives of other hostages.

“We don’t really seem to be any closer to getting answers,” Schelly said in a telephone interview from the American Embassy in New Dehli, the Indian capital. “It’s difficult to know that I’m leaving without answers.”

The group spent the past four weeks talking with government officials and visiting small villages in the mountainous region where Hutchings and the others were kidnapped.

Government officials were polite, but slow to act. Come back in a week, or 10 days, and there may be more information, the group was told.

Farooq Abdullah, chief minister of Jammu-Kashmir, had nothing concrete to bolster the claim he made last month that the hostages were alive and well, Schelly said.

Villagers were sympathetic, but reluctant to talk with Westerners who often were flanked by Indian military officials.

“Even if someone did know something, they’re caught in a hard place, between the Indian military and the militia,” she said. But they talked to people in bazaars, and the men in the group made pleas inside the mosques.

At one town, the family members hung a picture of the hostages on a lattice wall outside a mosque, where Muslim women tie ropes to symbolize the wishes they pray will come true.

Schelly has hope of learning something - anything - in the coming weeks, when the Indian government begins offering a reward for information about the captives.

The reward program, one of her main goals for making her second trip to the Asian countries in four months, is one of the successes. The other is getting assurances of cooperation from the Pakistani government.

“I do have some hope, but I’m not holding my breath,” she said. “My biggest fear is that we’ll never have any information, that we’ll never know what’s happened to them.

“If they’re alive, we want information of their condition. If they’re not alive, we want confirmation … and have that checked out. Right now, we’re stuck in limbo.”

Hutchings, Keith Mangan and Paul Wells of England and Dirk Hasert of Germany were kidnapped by a previously unknown group calling itself Al-Faran. The group threatened to kill their hostages unless the Indian government freed political prisoners it was holding.

The government refused, and there has been no contact with the rebels for nearly a year.

With a reward program nearly in place and both governments promising to cooperate, Schelly said she has no choice but to give India and Pakistan the benefit of the doubt and prepare to return home.

She’ll stop in England to meet with wives and family of former hostages and seek advice on how to deal with the doubts and hesitations that plague her every day.

“I want to talk to the people who have been there, and find out what their coping mechanisms are,” she said.

Schelly said she plans to return to Spokane in late November, and return to teaching physical education at Arlington Elementary School after Thanksgiving.

“I’m looking forward to coming back and teaching my kids,” she said, adding that she bought four cricket bats to introduce the game to her students.

Cricket bats, she noted, are made from a willow tree that grows in Kashmir, where her husband was kidnapped and, she hopes, is still alive.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo