Anubhav Sinha is directing a series called ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’. This series will be released this month, which is based on the 1999 Kandahar plane hijack incident. This incident is of 24 December 1999, when an Indian plane that left Nepal for Delhi was hijacked and the passengers were held hostage for seven days. Instead of Delhi, the plane stopped directly in Kandahar. This incident created a stir not only in India but all over the world. Let us know about the longest hijack of a country, which will soon be shown in a Netflix series.
What was the whole matter
The day was 24 December 1999. Indian Airlines plane IC 814 flew from Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport to New Delhi. There were 176 passengers and 15 crew members on board the plane. Some hijackers had boarded the plane disguised as passengers. As soon as the plane entered Indian airspace, the hijackers showed their true colors and took over the entire plane. They pointed guns at the crew members and passengers, beat them up and diverted the plane from Delhi to Pakistan. The news of the plane hijack had reached India and there was a stir in the government department. The families of the passengers on board the plane and the whole country were holding their breath.
Pakistan had made a demand
This incident was discussed all over the world because apart from Indians, some foreign passengers were also on board the plane. The hijacked plane stopped for a while in Amritsar and then left for Lahore. Later the plane landed in Lahore at 8:07 pm without taking permission from the Pakistan government. The next morning the plane left Lahore for Dubai and from there landed directly in Kandahar, Afghanistan. When the hijacked plane reached Dubai, a passenger got into an argument with the hijackers and during this he got injured. The hijackers dropped the blood-soaked passenger in Dubai itself, that passenger later died. Apart from this, 27 more passengers were released in exchange for refueling, most of whom were women and children. Then a diabetic patient was released. Apart from this, a woman suffering from cancer was allowed to go out of the plane for only 90 minutes for treatment in Kandahar. Within a few hours of the hijacking of the plane, the hijackers started making increasing demands. These included the demand for the release of terrorists lodged in Indian jails. They also demanded a ransom of 200 million US dollars.
What did the Indian government do?
The families and countrymen of the passengers on the hijacked plane were not only angry but there were also protests in India. At that time there was an NDA government in India and Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the then Prime Minister. Ajit Doval, currently the National Security Advisor of the Government of India, was also involved in that operation. At that time Kandahar was ruled by the Taliban. He intervened in the matter and after that the hijackers reduced their demands a bit. However, they remained adamant on the demand for the release of the terrorists. There was so much pressure on the government that finally it had to take a decision to take three terrorists from Indian jails to Kandahar and release them in exchange for the safety of the passengers.
These actors will be seen in the film
These three terrorists were Maulana Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar. At that time Jaswant Singh was the Foreign Minister and he himself reached Kandahar with the three terrorists. On December 31, after an agreement between the government and the hijackers, all the passengers were released and they all returned to Delhi. The then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee himself informed the countrymen about the release of the passengers from the hijacked plane and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The plane IC-814 was hijacked by Pakistani hijackers. Talking about the series based on this incident, it will be released on Netflix on August 29. Stars like Naseeruddin Shah, Vijay Verma, Dia Mirza, Patralekha, Pankaj Kapoor and Kumud Mishra will be seen in the new web show.