New Delhi: Indian Airlines flight 814 aka IC 814 hijack on December 24, 1999 has come back to make headlines after Anubhav Sinha’s Netflix series filmed on the controversial subject released on August 29, 2024. Receiving rave reviews for its cast, especially Vijay Varma, who plays pilot Devi Sharan, ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’ has caught everyone’s attention for its screenplay, and bringing back memores from the time with the use of archival footage to lend due veracity to the series. As audiences get a glimpse of history in this ensemble drama series, here are some lesser-known facts about the IC 814 hijack that make the longest hijack incident a noteworthy moment in history.
7 lesser-known facts about IC 814 hijack:
1. One of the passengers on board the Kathmandu to Delhi IC 814 flight was Roberto Giori, the then-owner of De La Rue Giori, a company which had control of the majority of the world’s currency-printing business at the time, a Time magazine’s report from 2000 stated.
2. According to a Frontline report, The Indian intelligence officers believed that Dawood Ibrahim, Indian gangster and a wanted terrorist, had provided assistance to hijackers in getting access to the Tribhuvan airport in Kathmandu.
3. RAW officer Shashi Bhushan Singh Tomar, then First Secretary in the Indian embassy in Kathmandu, was on the hijacked IC 814. Bhushan Singh Tomar was a brother-in-law of N.K. Singh, secretary of then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
4. Post the hijack, several passenger accounts stated that the hijackers asked passengers to show their gratitude to the Afghanistan government, after which money was collected and handed to Anuj Sharma, a passenger. Sharma was then instructed to commission a memento of the hijacking for a museum in Kandahar, a Frontline report on passenger accounts stated.
5. Post the hijack, Indian Airlines suspended all flights to and from Kathmandu. The Kathmandu flights were resumed 5 months after their suspension on June 1, 2000. The airline retained the same flight number IC 814, which continued to be in usage up until February 26, 2011, when the IC Code was retired by Air India post the merger between the two airlines.
6. On March 1, 2022, one of the hijackers, Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Pakistan. The gunmen who killed him were never identified. Ibrahim was responsible for the murder of the passenger Rupin Katyal.
7. In an interview with The New York Times, pilot Devi Sharan revealed that his attempt to crash land in Lahore was a deliberate attempt to get the airport authorities in Pakistan to allow their landing. Sharan had stated that because the hijackers listened to everything he said to his team, he kept this plan to himself.
The IC 814 Indian Airlines hijack finally ended eight days after its hijack in Kandahar when Indian authorities allowed the release of three terrorists, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Masood Azhar, and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, in exchange for the lives of the hostages held in the aircraft.
