She was a beautiful soul.

Neerja Bhanot was a senior flight attendant on Pan Am 73. On Sept. 5, 1986, four armed men from the Abu Nidal terrorist group hijacked Pan Am flight 73, which was traveling from Mumbai to Frankfurt and then onto New York.

The hijackers boarded the plane at Karachi airport in Pakistan and held 380 passengers and 13 crew members hostage.

Neerja could have been one of the first people to escape. Instead, over the next 17 hours, Neerja saved the lives of hundreds of strangers.

She helped the three members of the cockpit crew escape, ensuring the plane would be grounded and could not be flown.

She hid passports of the passengers so the hijackers would be unable to determine the nationalities of the passengers. The hijackers had demanded the passports of all Americans on board. Neerja took their passports and hid them under seat cushions, flushed them down the toilet and threw them down the trash shoot.

Angered they could not identify Americans, the terrorists began shooting and detonating explosives. Neerja opened the emergency doors and assisted several passengers in escaping from the plane. The hijackers opened fire on the escaping passengers and flight crew. Several ran out of ammunition.

Neerja was one of the last people to remain on the plane. A hijacker grabbed her by her ponytail and shot her at point blank range as shielded three children from the hail of bullets. She was 22 years old. The next day was to be her birthday.

Bollywood made a movie about her life. It is a departure from the typical Bollywood cliché musicals. It covers her life, including domestic abuse and arranged marriages in India. The movie is a tear-jerker.

https://youtu.be/PS_T77gdMAU

You can watch the movie on YouTube either in its original language or the English subtitled version. I would suggest the original.

If she had lived, Neerja would be 54 today, just five years older than me. She was posthumously awarded bravery medals by India, Pakistan, and the United States.

Redditor AintNoGibberish‘s father was on the flight.

My dad was on this flight and survived without a single scratch. He sat one seat away from the emergency exit and was lucky to be one of the first few people to escape. The other emergency exit’s inflatable slide didn’t dispatch as it should’ve so a lot of people jumped out of fear and ended up injuring themselves pretty badly.

He told me that during the entire ordeal Neerja was constantly under pressure from the terrorists and even though she was just 22, showed the maturity of someone with decades of experience in such a situation. She was absolutely selfless throughout the ordeal and even when she had the chance to escape towards the end, she didn’t. She waited till she could save every passenger and then get out, but unfortunately got shot at while saving some passengers.

My dad was unmarried at the time. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here today. RIP Neerja.

The hijackers were imprisoned until 2008.

On December 3, 2009, the FBI, in coordination with the State Department, announced a $5M reward for information that leads to the capture of each of the four remaining hijackers of Pan Am 73, who were reported to have been released from prison in Pakistan in 2008.

You can listen to her last cabin announcement on the flight that was hijacked.

One man was so inspired by Neerja, he erected a monument and statue to Neerja Bhanot in his village.

It has been unbelievable. I never imagined that after the film, people would come down to my village and ask for the way to Neerja’s memorial. It is the only memorial in the entire nation built in her memory. I was really inspired by the sacrifice of this young woman when I decided to make her statue in 2013.

According to the Pan Am Historical Society:

In 1987, she became the youngest and first woman recipient of the Ashoka Chakra award, India’s highest civilian decoration for bravery.

In 2004, the Indian Postal Service issued a stamp in her honor.

In 2006, she was awarded the 2006 Special Courage Award by the US Department of Justice.

She was a beautiful soul.