Hyderabad: “We fight deep inside enemy territory and one bullet can cripple an aircraft. If I ever become a prisoner of war, I will escape,” Flight Lieutenant Dilip Parulkar had said in 1968. Three years later, during the 1971 India-Pakistan war, Lt Parulkar was shot down inside Pakistani territory and taken as a prisoner of war. And true to his word, he did indeed attempt a daring escape with three other air force officers, which is now the subject of a film by documentary film-maker Taranjiet Singh Namdhari.
Film editor-turned-director Taranjiet Singh is a Hyderabadi who stumbled on a write-up penned by a neighbour of Flight Lieutenant Dilip Parulkar.
“Three brave soldiers, who escaped from a PoW camp in Pakistan post the 1971 war, intrigued me to probe for more. The protagonists were Indians and it was the call of duty to do so. These officers pushed boundaries to escape and the country does not know this. I traced Mr Parulkar’s neighbour, who connected me to the real hero in Pune. The journey started then,” Taranjit said.
Taranjit Singh, a graduate of the Hyderabad Central University, worked on the script for seven months, as the story kept changing with the real life characters he met spread across Pune, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
“Though the Pak military captured 12 IAF pilots, the film depicts eight pilots. My research took two years. We recorded each one’s testimony and that took 40 hours,” Taranjit said.
“In 1971 there was no technology, but our heroes used needles that were magnetised with transit batteries and later used as a compass. They dug their way out of the prison. They made a haversack with the buckles of a belt and curtains. With bags of dry fruits they managed to escape in 1972 from Rawalpindi to Peshawar. This outrageous escape pushed me to do a film,” Taranjit Singh said.
Another Hyderabadi, Sanjay Reddy, who has a defence background, is co-producer and also plays the role of Pakistani Wg Cdr Usman Hamid.
Funding for the film was not easy as resources are limited for independent film-makers.
“In 2015 I started looking for funds. Being an editor for several Bollywood movies, I thought the story would attract producers, but I was wrong. I started looking for actors in January 2015 but till July no one came forward. Seven months of frustration. I gave up in July. But in the same month I met my spiritual head in Bengaluru who offered to fund my movie. Then I attended a Film Bazaar in Goa and got the idea of crowd funding. The film now has seven major producers and 11 contributors.” The director has plans to commercially launch his feature film The Great Indian Escape, on October 8 this year, Indian Air Force Day.
