A biopic or fiction?
It was the last Christmas season of the 20th century. The airports had not started instructing passengers to remove belts and shoes before check-in as the Twin Towers had not gone down yet. A simple wave of hand would suffice to get one across to the boarding area. That was the situation in Kathmandu airport on Christmas Eve 1999 when Indian Airlines flight IC841 left for Delhi at around 4pm.
40 minutes into the flight, as they were entering Indian airspace, a masked passenger entered the cockpit (yes, it was not a security zone then) when a steward entered to serve drinks, put a knife on the steward and announced that the plane was hijacked. Indian air traffic control was informed. The information, however, did not descend through the chain of command appropriately. Bureaucracy and apathy were to be blamed. After all, India had just fought a war in Kargil a few months previously, and security was supposed to be on high alert. Many high-ranking officers supposed to be on the heels of things only heard about it from the media.
The hijackers wanted the plane to be diverted to Lahore, but landing rights were outrightly refused by the Pakistanis. Even the Indian High CommissioCommissioner'sproved futile. With critical fuel levels, IC841 had to land in Amritsar to refuel. The plan was to keep the plane on Indian soil while negotiators cut a deal with the hijackers and maybe incapacitate the machine. Sensing something was amiss, the hijackers scooted off before refuelling, and the Indian officials were left staring at an empty tarmac.
In the meantime, pandemonium was the order of the day on board. Passengers were cowed into submission. Two passengers were stabbed, one fatally. The flight captain pleaded with Lahore to land with hardly any fuel on the Airbus. It was again denied. The lights on the runway were switched off. Only when the pilot was about to land on the national highway did the airport allow landing. Again, Indian representatives failed to arrive on time to negotiate. After fueling, the plane left Lahore.
Now, the hijackers wanted to go to Kandahar in Afghanistan. As we remember, Afghanistan in 1999 was a pariah state. Ruled by a ruthless Taliban administration, many countries, including India, did not recognise its Government. Kandahar Airport could accept any night landing as it did not have the necessary facilities. So, the hijackers' request was denied. IC814 was hovering around the Arabian Sea, hoping any Gulf states could take them in. They stopped in a Dubai airbase. They refuelled in exchange for 27 hostages, including the 2 stabbed passengers, one dead and left for Afghanistan.
The plane finally landed in Kandahar on Christmas morning. The next seven days saw intense negotiations. The process proved complex as India did not recognise the Taliban government. Hence, it could not send its representatives there, so it depended on the Indian High Commission in Islamabad and the United Nations. Mediation was complicated with the Taliban as they were not in total control. Osama Bin Laden and ISIS ruled over a large of the country as well. They had a say in the running of Afghanistan.
The dilemma faced by the Indian Government and its bodies was to balance between giving too much to the terrorists and bringing home the passengers unscathed.
For the safe return of passengers, three dangerous terrorists in the Indian jails had to be released. The five hijackers were never captured. The released terrorists (Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh and Mushtaq Zargar) were later found to be monumental in many terror activities in India and the world over **. The eternal question is whether releasing these close to 200 passengers in exchange for freeing the three infamous crooks was worthwhile. The crooks ended up killing so many more innocent people, causing so much destruction, and being the seed for all the chaos we face in the world today. In 1999, with so much pressure from the media and public, making a deal with the hijackers seemed the most logical thing to do.
Since this web series was released, Netflix has been on the receiving end. Even the Netflix Head of India was called by the authorities to answer specific queries. The general Indian public has been up in arms over two issues. Firstly, intelligence work into the whole incident suggested that the entire hostage event was masterminded by the ISI of Pakistan. ISI fingerprint was all over in the planning and execution of the act. Nowhere in the series did ISI or Pakistan were depicted as the bad guys.
Secondly, it is common knowledge that religion played an essential basis in the hijacking. The hijackers were all Muslims, and the demand was to release Islamic extremists. In the eyes of the viewers, the filmmakers downplayed this fact. The hijackers' religion was shadowed by using their codenames throughout. Surprisingly, Bhola and Shankar overtly refer to Lord Shiva, the Lord of destruction, while other codenames, Doc, Chief and Burger, were secular. Are they trying to tell the unassuming, ignorant audience that the hijackers were part of the Hindu terrorism that the opposition to BJP's rule is trying to promote? Later, Netflix published a disclaimer listing the hijackers' full names in their credits. But then this notice was only put for the Indian audience. The rest of the world can go on thinking that the whole thing was part of the Hindu terror that the leftists are propagating. When their co-conspirators were changed later, the court documents mentioned the hijackers' code names as one of their many aliases.
Also, the series tries to humanise the terrorists. Imagine the hijacker lending a worried flight attendant his phone so she could call and check on her ailing father in Delhi. In another scene, there is a hint of a romantic vibe between a stewardess and one of the hijackers. After witnessing two of the passengers stabbed in front of their eyes, it is illogical to see, in one scene, the passengers and hijackers clapping and singing together in a game of antakshari. (It's too early for Stockholm Syndrome to settle in, right?)
The producers claim the whole offering is based on actual events and have no qualms about using footage from yesteryears. Yet they thought it was essential to change the name of the airline crew and the government officials. ISI comes out squeaky clean from this whole fiasco. They bask in depicting a grossly incompetent bunch of bumbling Indian bureaucrats awkwardly trying to defuse a volatile situation. Anyway, the experience of handling such situations was lacking in that era. The director failed to show urgency in their efforts. Some are even comical.
Furthermore, the event was in a hostile foreign land unrecognised by the Government of the day. Is it a coincidence that the ruling coalition then is the same one ruling today? What are they saying, that the present government is also weak?
** 2001 Indian Parliament attack, 2002 kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, 2008 Mumbai attacks, 2016 Pathankot attack, 2019 Pulwama attack, Azhad later founded Jaish-e-Muhammed (JeM) in 2000, which gained notoriety for the death of hundreds of people and armed forces personnel. Sheikh was arrested in 2002 in Pakistan for the abduction and murder of Daniel Pearl and played a role in planning the September 2001 attacks in the U.S. Zargar has played an active role in training Islamic militants in Pakistan-administered Jammu & Kashmir.
P.S. The story's production value needed to be more compelling. The urgency felt by the hostages' fear and apprehension was not transferred adequately to the screen. The desperation of the whole event was not palpable.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
