A new Netflix series based on the December 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight has come out. It took seven days to rescue the plane and it was the longest hijacking of an aircraft in the history of Indian aviation.
The book ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’ by Captain Devi Sharan, the pilot of the hijacked flight, presents the crisis from a different perspective, in which the politicians and bureaucrats in Delhi’s war room From people to terrified hostages aboard.
On December 24, 1999, five masked men hijacked a flight from Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu to New Delhi. Planes was hijacked 40 minutes after take off.
Sharan was forced to take the plane into Pakistani airspace, where he was denied landing clearance despite repeated requests from the Indian High Commission in Pakistan.
The plane then landed in Amritsar shortly before 7pm with barely 10 minutes of fuel left.
Indian officials in Amritsar were tasked with delaying the refueling of the aircraft as much as possible. But at the same time, the hijackers wanted the plane to take off again and be allowed to land in Pakistan.
India According to TODAY, Sharan spoke to the Indian Air Traffic Control and said to please get permission to land at Opala (Lahore’s Allama Iqbal International Airport). Otherwise they are ready to drop anywhere … They have already picked 10 people to kill.
As they contacted ATC again, and told them that the hijackers had started killing the hostages, chaos broke out. Soon after that at 7:50 PM they took off.
“We are all going to die,” he told ATC.
The hijackers forced Sharan to take the plane to Lahore, where the pilot Pakistan He made an emergency landing despite not receiving permission from KATC, which turned off all lights and navigational equipment at the airport.
After refueling, the aircraft once again took off from Lahore and attempted to land in Dubai. After not getting permission there too, the flight landed at Al Munhid Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.
Here, the hijackers freed 27 of the 176 passengers, including the body of 25-year-old Rupin Katyal, who was stabbed to death by the hijackers.
After that, the plane was finally under the control of the Taliban, the original destination of the hijackers Afghanistan Landed at Kandahar airport.
The rest of the hostages waited there for the next six days, while the government led by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party negotiated with the terrorists, who wanted India to release 36 prisoners in exchange for the hostages.
The five Pakistani hijackers were identified as Ibrahim Athar, Shahid Akhtar Syed, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim and Shakir and belonged to Pakistan-based militant group Harakat al-Mujahideen (HUM).
Their demands were simple: they wanted the release of HUM members Ahmad Umar Saeed Sheikh and Masood Azhar and Pakistan-backed Kashmiri militant Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar.
After tough negotiations and a situation of uncertainty, on 30 December the Indian government was able to convince the hijackers to release all the hostages in exchange for three terrorists.
One of the hostages on the flight, 41-year-old merchant navy captain Colto Ravikumar, said: ‘I must have gone to sleep at about three in the morning and woke up at eight. Afghan bread was served for breakfast.
‘I didn’t feel like eating. I was worried that the century would end in a few hours and I would miss the celebration. I was thinking about many things.’
The three freed terrorists face charges of involvement in terrorist attacks, including the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, and the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. .
After the release of the hostages, the Indian authorities believed that the Taliban authorities would arrest the kidnappers and take custody of the released terrorists. Instead, the Taliban put them in a car and took them across the border to the Pakistani city of Quetta.
In this December 27, 1999 photo, Taliban officials stand in front of a hijacked Indian plane at the airport in Kandahar, Afghanistan.(AFP)
The BJP government has come under fire for failing to resolve the crisis quickly, and particularly for allowing the plane to leave Indian territory.
Former Intelligence Bureau chief AK Doval, 64, who led the four-member negotiating team to Kandahar, called it a “diplomatic failure” and a “huge embarrassment” for India.
He told news agency Press Trust of India that ‘Due to our incompetence there was a diplomatic failure. While we knew that the US is totally against terrorists, they are against the Taliban.
‘So we couldn’t take advantage of that. Our ambassadors could not even enter the (Abu Dhabi) airport.
This section contains related reference points (Related Nodes field).
The series is produced by Anubhu Sinha and Trishant Shrivastava and will see several actors working together in its cast.
Anubhu Sinha told Variety magazine that ‘Trishant, the writer, and I thought a lot about the fact that most of the information is available online. Documentaries and vlogs have been made, articles have been written, so we wanted to dig deeper for more information.’
He said, ‘We met the officials conducting the rescue mission from Delhi, and the passengers and crew told us the story inside the plane.
‘Adrian Levy, a well-known journalist, writer and filmmaker from London, joined us and a new international canvas appeared before us.
‘What transpired in those seven days turned out to be a compelling story of terrifying and thrilling tactics and diplomatic maneuvers.
‘Audiences must know about this story that has never been fully told before by actors who I don’t know if I will be able to work with them again.’
IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack will be available to watch on Netflix from August 29.
#Netflix #series #hijacking #Indian #airliner #years
2024-08-27 22:36:51
