Being on a plane that suffers the longest hijacking in history. Spending the period between Christmas and almost the end of the year in constant fear of dying. Being subjected to risks, humiliations, violence. This is what happened to the crew and passengers of the Indian Airlines Flight 814also known as flight IC 814, at the center of a story that mixes geopolitics and current events. Because, in order to save civilians, pilots and stewardesses, the hijackers got away with it, obtaining what they wanted in negotiations, and subsequently organized and carried out several terrorist attacks, showing the world the deadly face of Islamic terrorism before September 11.
The flight
It is December 24, 1999, the IC 814 is scheduled to fly from Kathmandu to Delhi. This is an Airbus A300, piloted by Captain You must Sharan. With him, the first officer Rajinder Kumar and the flight engineer Anil Kumar Jaggia. On board there are people of all ages, men, women, elderly, children. Some of them are getting ready for the holidays, even with Santa Claus hats. One is an important entrepreneur, Roberto Giori, owner of De La Rue, an old company that deals, among other things, with philatelic printing. At 5:30 pm, local time, as soon as the carrier enters Indian airspace, it is attacked by 5 men wearing balaclavas.
The hijacking
The reason for the hijacking was clear: it was aimed at freeing some Pakistani terrorists imprisoned in India, namely Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Masood Azhar And Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar. As India Today reports, one of them, Masood Azhar founded Jaish-e-Mohammed – the group responsible for the attack on the Indian parliament in 2001, the Mumbai attacks in 2008 and the Pulwama attacks in 2009. Another, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, was arrested for the kidnapping and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl.
The names of the hijackers were instead Ibrahim Akhtar, Shahid Akhtar Sayeed, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Zahoor Mistry and Shakir, all with a long curriculum of attacks and terrorist actions. They had arrived in Nepal and had boarded the plane just as it was taking off from Kathmandu. When the hijackers took control of the plane, they ordered the pilot to land at Lahorein Pakistan, but was denied by the Pakistani authorities. A brief landing was instead granted to Amritsarto refuel.
Here, although late, they tried to stop the aircraft to make a new take-off, which did not happen, between threats to kill the passengers and the last-minute attempt to cut off the plane with the tanker full of fuel. Five of the passengers had been tied hand and foot and the hijackers had said they would kill them if the new take-off was prevented. It was during this landing that he met his death, with knife wounds to the neck, Satnam Singhan Asian man with German citizenship. At 19:49, with the tank in reserve, at the moment of the new take-off, the captain told the control tower: “We are all going to die”.
The plane then tried to land again at Lahore, but the airport turned off its lights to prevent it. When the captain, who was almost out of fuel, attempted to make a crash landing, the authorities finally allowed the plane to land, only to turn off the lights again and try in vain to prevent another take-off. Further landings were made at Dubai – where 27 hostages were released, including the wounded Rupin Katyalwho however died shortly thereafter – and finally, between 25 and 26 December, to Kandaharin Afghanistan, then under the control of the Taliban.
The latter in fact surrounded the plane and said they offered to negotiate between the dictators and India. India accepted, not knowing the Taliban who, in reality armed to the teeth, were on the side of the hijackers. The initial demands included the release of 36 terrorists in prison, including a terrorist leader, Sajjad Afghani, and 200 million dollars. After long days and nights, on December 30 three prisoners were released and there was a safe conduct for the hijackers between Afghanistan and Pakistan to This one.
During the hijacking, the passengers and crew remained under the control of the hijackers, armed with Kalashnikov and knives: it was not always possible for them to eat or use the toilets, there were also people on board with chronic diseases who needed specific care, and women and children were separated from the men. No one was spared various forms of violence. The final toll was 1 dead and 17 injured.
The process
After the hijacking, Indian Airlines obviously tightened security measures against the terrorist threat. The investigations conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation led to the indictment of 10 people, including 7 who are still at large (with the exception of Mistry Zahoorkilled in a shootout in 2022). The other three defendants, Abdul Latif, Yusuf Nepali and Dilip Kumar Bhujel, were sentenced to life in prison in 2008 on charges of procuring false passports for the hijackers and helping them transport weapons on board the aircraft. However, 19 people were acquitted in 2020 on charges related to the false documents, including Abdul Latif.
The TV series
In 2024 Netflix has made available in its catalogue the miniseries entitled “The Kandahar Hijack: The Hijacking of Flight IC 814”: this is a work taken from the memoir “Flight Into Fear: The Captain’s Story” by Devi Sharan, the courageous captain and first pilot who fought for the safety and dignity of the flight’s passengers during the hijacking.
The series includes very harsh scenes, with the violence and abuse that the hijackers perpetrated in
that almost week of terror. No less gripping are the scenes depicting the negotiations for the release of the hostages, scenes that cast a sinister light on the events of those days.