Hope Shrinks, Hasn’T Vanished For Jane Schelly Plans Third Kashmir Quest For Kidnapped Husband

Discussing her upcoming trip to the land where her husband was kidnapped, Jane Schelly held her right thumb and forefinger about a quarter-inch apart.

There is that much hope, she said, that Don Hutchings is still alive, somewhere in the mountainous region that spans India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

That quarter-inch of hope against a world of logic is enough, she said. Enough to travel one more time this summer to Kashmir, one of the world’s most volatile regions, a place picked as the most likely to cause a nuclear war.

“I’m looking for things that will help give me closure,” Schelly said. “What are the things that will allow me to put this behind me?”

“This” is the three-year ordeal that began when Hutchings, a Spokane neuropsychologist, was abducted. Schelly and Hutchings were trekking through Kashmir in 1995 when armed militants came to their camp, demanded to see their passports, and separated them.

Hutchings and three other male tourists - another American and two Britons - were ordered to accompany the gunmen to a nearby town, supposedly to have their passports checked by the militants’ commander. Schelly and other women tourists were told to wait at their camp.

The men did not return. Instead, a Kashmiri guide who also had been taken by the militants returned with a letter. It demanded the Indian government release 21 political prisoners in exchange for the tourists.

The Indians refused.

Schelly, Hutchings and the other tourists were caught in the decades-long argument over Kashmir that has killed an estimated 20,000 people since 1990.

For the next five months, the militants who called themselves Al-Faran made sporadic threats to kill their hostages if their demands weren’t met. Negotiations ceased in November 1995. A month later, the Indian Army ambushed and killed a group of armed militants they suspect were part of the Al-Faran group.

Rewards have been offered, Web pages established, and psychics contacted, seeking clues of the hostages’ fate. There are none.

Schelly, an Arlington Elementary School physical education teacher, has spent her Julys and Augusts in India and Pakistan. She has talked to police, military and government officials, made media appeals for the hostages’ release and distributed leaflets describing a reward for information about their fate.

She has little to show for the miles and meetings. Indian police have captured militants who have reported the hostages were killed in December 1995 or January 1996 near the town of Magam. Searches for bodies turned up nothing, and Schelly met people last summer who said they saw the hostages alive in the spring of 1996.

Schelly also interviewed one of the captured militants in prison. He said he was told the hostages were killed but didn’t see it himself.

“I believe that he believes the information,” she said. “But does that make it true?”

Investigators have told her they believe only one member of Al-Faran is still alive who helped abduct the hostages and was present when they were allegedly killed.

But they won’t tell her his name, or where he might be.

This week, Schelly will begin a monthlong odyssey that will take her back to Srinagar, the capital of Indian Kashmir. She’ll appeal for information or release of the hostages at the city’s main mosque on July 3, the eve of the kidnapping anniversary. She will talk with government and police officials whom she has badgered for three years, and introduce herself to their replacements.

If she gets weary, she might turn on her laptop computer and reread a note from a friend from Arlington Elementary, directing her to the Gospel of Luke and the story of the persistent widow. For years, according to the parable, the widow asked for justice from a corrupt official. Finally he gave in - not because he cared about justice or her plight, but because he was tired of listening to her.

“How do I mention this without suggesting they’re corrupt?” Schelly wondered with a smile.

She will return to the region a month after India and Pakistan each tested nuclear bombs. She doesn’t know how Americans will be received in countries that face U.S. embargoes for those tests. She might not be allowed to travel to the areas where the kidnapping occurred and the killings were reported, because militant separatists are fighting with Indian troops.

She plans to visit Muzaffrabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, which is within earshot of the artillery guns firing across the border, and the nearby refugee camps.

Schelly will try to answer the questions she asks herself as much as others ask her:

“Could they still be alive? If they are, is there even anything I can do? At what point do I just accept the story that they were killed?”

It is logical to conclude the hostages are dead, she said. But that quarter-inch of hope sometimes cancels logic.

“When do you put that hope aside? Someone told me, ‘You’ll just know in your own heart.”’

Anniversary Spokane friends of neuropsychologist Don Hutchings hope to mark the third anniversary of his kidnapping with bells and reader boards. The Spokane Mountaineers, an organization to which Hutchings and his wife, Jane Schelly, both belong, will ask area priests and ministers to mention him in services next week and request congregations pray for release or information about his fate. The Mountaineers club will also ask churches to ring their bells for five minutes at noon on July 4, the anniversary of his 1995 kidnapping. Local businesses, espresso stands and schools will be asked to post messages such as “Freedom for Don Hutchings” or “Remember Don Hutchings” on their reader boards.