After due procedure, IAF will take the decision if Wg Cdr Abhinandan is fit to fly again
Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who was in the custody of Pakistan after his MiG 21 Bison crashed into the neighbouring country’s territory, successfully returned to India late on March 1.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had declared that the IAF pilot will be released 1 as a “gesture of peace”, while the Ministry of External Affairs had said Pakistan’s move was in “consonance with the Geneva conventions”.
After his return from the Wagah-Attari border, the IAF pilot will be taken by a convoy to the Amritsar airport, a distance of 20 kilometres from the border. From there, he will fly to Delhi where he will reunite with his family.
While the nation anxiously waited for Wg Cdr Abhinandan to come back home, it’ll be a while for him to get back to his routine life.
When a Prisoner of War (PoW) is sent home, there is a list of modalities and thorough protocol that he has to go through before his arrival is formalized.
While the MEA has not officially made it clear if the IAF pilot is indeed a PoW, he will have to go through a comprehensive procedure, which has been listed below:
# Wg Cdr Abhinandan will be directly taken to the Indian Air Force Intelligence Unit as soon as he arrives after his handover at the Integrated Check Post.
# He will be made to undergo a thorough medical examination in order to gauge his physical as well as mental health.
# Scans will be conducted to check if he has been bugged by Pakistani army.
# He will need to undergo psychological examination too, considering that he might have been projected to traumatic conditions in the enemy territory in order to elicit intel from him.
# The IAF pilot may even be questioned by the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing. (R&AW).
# Then comes the most rigorous step – the IAF debriefing. The debriefing is carried out by seniors in the Indian Air Force to find out what information was obtained from him during his captivity and ensure that he hasn't been recruited by the other side.
After the procedure, the forces will take the decision if Wg Cdr Abhinandan is fit to fly again.
Flight Lieutenant Kambampati Nachiketa, who was captured by Pakistan during the Kargil War in 1999 and released within eight days, had returned to India but not without peril. After his return, Flight Lt. Nachiketa was medically downgraded and given ground duties for the first three years as he had suffered a compression fracture, caused by ejecting out of MiG-27. The IAF pilot resumed flying only in 2003.
