The incident also raised serious concerns about the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government’s response. Here is what happened.

What was flight IC-814?

Flight IC-814, an Airbus 300, was to travel from the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, to Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi on December 24, 1999.

In the book IC 814 Hijacked: The Inside Storywritten by flight engineer Anil. K Jaggia and journalist Saurabh Shukla, Jaggia recalled that all the passengers were seated around 4 pm, with the 11 crew members also prepared for take-off.

By 4.39 pm, the flight reached Indian airspace and those in the cockpit were having tea and coffee. Steward Anil Sharma was leaving the area when an intruder pushed him and walked in, startling Captain Devi Sharan and Jaggia.

Jaggia wrote of the intruder, “In the instant we caught a glimpse of him, we knew we were in trouble, for his face was masked under a red balaclava. Even his eyes behind the slit in the monkey-cap were hidden behind photochromatic lenses”. The man held a grenade in his left hand and a revolver in his right.

“We were being hijacked. The intruder barked: ‘Koi hoshiyari nahin karega. Koi hillega nahin. Tayyara hamare kabaze main hain. (Nobody move or try to act smart, we have seized the aircraft.)’”, Jaggia recalled. At 4.53 pm, the aircraft was hijacked.

What happened to the IC-814 in Amritsar?

According to the statement from then Minister of External Affairs Jaswant Singh in Parliament on March 1, 2000, the Air Traffic Control (ATC) in Delhi first received information of the hijacking at 4.56 pm. This was thanks to Captain Sharan sending a coded message unseen by the hijackers, who demanded that the aircraft be taken to Lahore, Pakistan.

After the ATC refused permission to land in Lahore, the flight reached Amritsar at 7 pm and the hijackers demanded refueling. Writing in The Indian Express in 2019then Director General of Police (DGP) for Punjab Sarabjit Singh recalled how he refused to allow refueling, finding it odd that the aircraft engines were running throughout.

Singh was also communicating with the Central Crisis Management Group (CMG). Assisted by the central committee at the ATC in New Delhi, it was procedurally mandated to take charge in case of a hijacking. Its members included Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) HS Khola, senior intelligence and security officials and aviation experts.

Singh recalled how Shyamal Datta, then director of the Intelligence Bureau, asked if Singh could immobilize the aircraft, “One suggestion being that we could maybe puncture the tires by shooting at them. It was an outlandish suggestion, and I don’t know if others were listening at the other end when I used some expletives and asked him if he thought those were cycle tires. They were huge tubeless tires, multiple to each wheel, and puncturing them would have set off huge explosions and possibly not had any impact.”

As the government strictly believed in ensuring no passenger casualties, its options were limited.

Former Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) chief and CMG member AS Dulat said earlier this month that there was no definite solution proposed in the CMG, either. “The Home Minister came, Principal Secretary, NSA (National Security Adviser) came… nobody decided anything……and then we blamed DGP Punjab [Sarabjit Singh]… He said ‘my Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had told me I don’t want bloodshed in Amritsar. Let it pass if it has to pass’. But Delhi took no decision and after the plane took off from Amritsar everybody blamed everybody,” said Dulat.

Suddenly, the IC-814 took off after about 47 minutes from Amritsar, as hijackers grew suspicious of what was unfolding. The aircraft landed at Lahore at 8.01 pm. “Permission to land was given only when the pilot informed ATC Lahore that he would be forced to crash-land the aircraft as fuel had got exhausted,” the External Affairs Minister’s statement said. The aircraft was then refueled.

At 10.32 pm, it took off for Kabul, Afghanistan. However, Kabul informed them that there were no night landing facilities and the aircraft thus headed for Dubai, landing at 01.32 am on December 25. Following discussions between the UAE authorities and the hijackers, 27 passengers were released. The dead body of one passenger named Rupin Katyal, who had been stabbed by the hijackers earlier, was also off-loaded. The released passengers reached India on a special flight.

The final negotiations

The aircraft then took off at 6.20 am and landed at the Kandahar airport in Afghanistan at 8.33 am. It stayed there until the hijacking ended on December 31.

Jaswant Singh said he also reached out to countries in the region for help in diffusing the situation. Direct discussions between hijackers and Indian officials happened between December 27 and 31, with Singh going to Kandahar.

Initially, 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.

India released Masood Azhar in 1999. (Express archives)

The Taliban government in Afghanistan, despite not being recognized by India, was also involved in the negotiations. It “advised the hijackers that their demands for money and the coffin of Sajad Afghani were unIslamic. These were, therefore, dropped by the hijackers. Our urging thereafter that a demand for release of terrorists was also un-Islamic was not pressed by the Taliban with the hijackers,” the MEA said.

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.

Hostage passengers and crew reached Delhi via two special flights. The hijacked aircraft returned to New Delhi on January 1, 2000.

Aftermath

The Indian government said in its statement, “The hijacking incident has once again highlighted the complicity of Pakistan and of organizations patronized 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. Janata Dal (United) leader Sharad Yadavthen 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.