U.S. Offers Reward In Kidnapping Up To $2 Million Will Be Offered For Information About Hutchings

The United States will pay up to $2 million for information about Spokane psychologist Donald Hutchings, who was kidnapped more than 16 months ago in Kashmir.

The reward offer is the latest attempt to gather information about four Western tourists seized by a mysterious guerrilla group.

Hutchings’ wife, Jane Schelly, recently made a trip to India and Pakistan to help set up the reward program and talk with government officials.

“We’re hoping with that in place, information will come out, and it will be followed up on,” she said last week in a telephone interview from New Delhi.

Schelly, a physical education teacher at Arlington Elementary School, has since left India and is en route to the United States.

“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.”

Hutchings and Schelly were traveling in Kashmir with other Western tourists on July 4, 1995, when their camp was surrounded by gunmen. Hutchings and other men in the group were taken at gunpoint; Schelly and other women were allowed to return to a nearby city with their Kashmiri guides.

The rebels, a previously unknown group calling itself Al-Faran, later captured other tourists and demanded India release more than a dozen political prisoners in exchange for the hostages. The Indian government refused.

One American escaped from the group, and the rebels apparently beheaded a Norwegian captive.

At various times, they reported the other captives were seriously wounded or in good health.

When the rebels broke off contact with the Indian government last November, Hutchings, Britons Keith Mangan and Paul Wells and German Dirk Hasert were believed to be alive somewhere in the Himalayas.

A Kashmiri official announced in October that he had information the hostages were alive, but Schelly said last week the information could not be verified. , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Jim Camden Staff writer The Associated Press contributed to this report.