With the dawn of an era of air transport and the growing requirements and needs of Aviation industry, which holds a history of many plane hijacks in 90s, one of the longest hijacking of the Aviation industry is “the Kandhar hijack” that took place in 1999, in an Indian Airlines plane IC 814. To let the people know about the hijack Netflix released a series on it, but was further summoned by the court for some names and objectionable contents. Before going through the details of that let us first know about the Kandhar hijack.
Where and how the Kandhar hijack took place
The series is inspired by a real-life hijacking. On Dec. 24, 1999, Indian Airlines flight IC 814 left Kathmandu with more than 175 passengers on board. The aircraft was headed toward Delhi. As it flew into Indian territory, IC 814 was taken over by five masked hijackers. Before eventually ending up in Taliban-governed Kandahar, Afghanistan, the plane made unplanned stops in Amritsar, (India) Lahore, (Pakistan) and Dubai, (United Arab Emirates). The hijack lasted seven days.
Motive of the hijackers behind the incident
The hijackers demanded the release of 36 terrorists held in India, including Masood Azhar who later founded the Jaish-e-Mohammed — involved in the 2019 Pulwama attacks. They also asked for the coffin of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) leader Sajad Afghani and US$ 200 million.Ultimately, the Indian government released three terrorists: Masood Azhar, Mushtaq Zargar and Omar Shaikh. Taliban said they would then have the aircraft under their jurisdiction. Despite the Indian government asking for the hijackers and the released terrorists to be treated as criminals under the law, the Taliban let them leave Afghanistan after 10 hours.
The Aftermath
The Indian government said in its statement, “The hijacking incident has once again highlighted the complicity of Pakistan and of organisations patronised and supported by it in terrorist acts against India.” It said the police arrested four operatives of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) of Pakistan in Mumbai. The operatives belonged to the HuM.
“Their interrogation has established that the hijacking was masterminded by Pakistan’s ISI with the assistance of the Harkat. It was further revealed that all the five hijackers were also Pakistanis. The hijackers are now believed to be in Pakistan,” the government said. The incident also led to criticism of the Central government’s role. Then the Civil Aviation Minister, later said the decision-making largely happened within the Prime Minister’s Office and the CMG was not kept in the loop.
Controversy Around ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’
The controversy began on social media as many pointed out the non-Muslim names of the hijackers in the show and sought a boycott. However, an earlier Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) note from 2000, which outlined the sequence of events, had conceded that the hijackers had codenamed themselves as Burger, Shankar, Bhola and Doctor. As the story is being inspired by the true events the change of names and the hindu-muslim thing involved in the series contributed to the boycott all round which was strongly disliked by the people. Netflix was further asked to update the disclaimer and real names of the terrorist.
The decision came after officials of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry met Netflix representatives over the alleged misrepresentation of facts in the new series. Amid row over names of terrorists in ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’, Netflix has agreed to update disclaimer of the series and mention real names of hijackers.
Cast and Crew of the Series
The series features an ensemble cast including
Vijay Varma,
Naseeruddin Shah,
Pankaj Kapur,
Manoj Pahwa,
Arvind Swami,
Anupam Tripathi,
Dia Mirza,
Patralekhaa,
Amrita Puri,
Dibyendu Bhattacharya,
Kumud Mishra
