Escape from Pakistan: A Daughter’s Chronicle of Bravery and Heroism

By Pallavi Dubey

Could a serving Indian naval officer get beaten, kidnapped and be left in a hospital with no recourse to diplomatic succour? Pakistan in the sixties was a world far removed from the freewheeling capitals of the western world. For Deborah Ann Shea, daughter of Indian naval attache Commodore Jack Shea, it was a living nightmare.

Some forty years later, she recreates the painful memories, the moments of pure terror that she and her family faced while in the port city of Karachi, Pakistan, in a book that talks of her father’s hardship, and hers. In a longoverdue tribute to her father Com. Jack Shea – a gallant mariner who epitomised courage, loyalty and survival against overwhelming odds - and a cautionary tale that serves as a reminder for all Indians to know and acknowledge the price of freedom that is paid by our men in uniform - she told her audience of how it took her 4 years to write this book.

Not getting any younger, she trawled through four drafts before she finally nailed a final version. The book, ‘Escape From Pakistan’ is more than a pulse-pounding thriller. While it gives a first-hand insight into the precarious times post-partition in Pakistan, 1965, it is also a tender and inspiring story of Com. Shea, who masterminded the escape, but with brutal consequences to himself.

It is an account of the Naval Attaché who was chosen for a mission to bring home safely the First Secretary at the High Commission who was dangerously close to being booked for espionage in Karachi. While he manages to bring the family back to New Delhi safe by cargo ship, he himself lands in deep trouble, gets battered, thrashed and then lies comatose for months in a hospital in Karachi.

Debora, speaking yesterday in Bengaluru, remarked, “This book is very close to my heart. As I am back to base I realize that I am fulfilling a dream I hold so dear, and reading out Escape From Pakistan is an extremely wholesome experience for me. I hope that I have touched hearts with my honest effort to do justice to the service that my father has offered to our nation. My childhood memories of him being away from home are very vivid and my book is just a written document of those bittersweet memories along with carefully examined archival resources, letters and diaries and various personal accounts.”