Among the initial demands of the five IC 814 hijackers was the body of a terrorist who was buried six months earlier. The terrorist whose body they were demanding was Sajjad Afghani, killed in Jammu in July 1999. Who was Afghani?
Indian Airlines flight IC 814 was hijacked in 1999 and taken to Kandahar, Afghanistan. The hijackers initially demanded that the coffin of a terrorist, Sajjad Afghani, be handed over to them. (Image: AFP)
"Give us straight answers. Keep your sentences short," read the piece of paper thrown out of the plane. This was Indian Airlines flight IC 814 that had been hijacked to Kandahar. The hijackers had sent their demands to the Indian negotiators. Only then, they said, they would release the prisoners. Their initial demands were -- release 36 terrorists, give $200 million (Rs 860 crore) and ‘the coffin of martyr' Sajjad Afghani.
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The hijacking of IC 814 is back in focus with the 1999 hostage crisis being now turned into a Netflix series, 'IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack', directed by Anubhav Sinha. It stars Naseeruddin Shah, Vijay Varma, and Pankaj Kapur. The series is an adaption of Captain Devi Sharan’s book ‘Flight into Fear’, published in 2000.
The hijackers spoke to the Indian government through walkie-talkies provided by the Air Traffic Controller (ATC) Kandahar, and they used the VHS set of the aircraft.
The demand for the coffin brought Taliban hardliners to the front, and they began to bring in pressure that the hijackers withdraw their demands.
The Taliban Supreme Council, Shura, got involved, and held a meeting. It finally concluded that the hijackers' demand for money was un-Islamic and should be dropped. The Taliban leaders said if the hijackers refused to comply, they would be asked to fly out of Kandahar.
The initial demands were mostly retracted, with India finally swapping three terrorists for all the passengers of IC 814.
All this after intense negotiations at the Kandahar airport.
It was 1999, and Afghanistan was being run by the Taliban as it is now.
Taliban chief Mullah Omar asked his foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil to carry forward the negotiations, who would speak to the chief hijacker for 30 minutes, according to Anil K Jaggia and Saurabh Shukla in their book, 'IC 814 Hijacked: The Inside Story'.
WHO WAS THE TERRORIST? WHY WAS HE WANTED?
In 1991, Sajjad Afghani became Commander in Chief of the terrorist outfit Harkat-ul-Ansar in Srinagar.
In June 1994, he was arrested with terrorist Masood Azhar, then the general secretary of the terror organisation Harkat-ul-Ansar, by the Indian Border Security Force (BSF).
Lt Gen Arjun Ray, then Brigadier General Staff (BGS), described Afghani, a fragile looking but tough man who had even fought the Russians, as the "biggest catch".
The Harkat-ul-Mujahideen came together with another terror outfit, the Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI), to form the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA) in 1993. This was Pakistan's nefarious plan to foment more trouble and bloodshed in Jammu and Kashmir.
Indian security forces, with the arrest of three of the leaders, foiled that plan.
First, Nasrullah Mansur Langrayal, chief of the former Harkat-ul Mujahideen was arrested in November 1993. In March 1994, Harkat-ul-Ansar's Azhar, and its J&K unit chief Sajjad Afghani were arrested in Srinagar.
Sajjad Afghani was the chief commander of Harkat-ul-Ansar and was kept in a high-security prison, Kotbalwal Jail, in Jammu.
He was shot dead during a jailbreak attempt on July 15, 1999.
SAJJAD AFGHANI DUG A 23-FOOT-LONG TUNNEL IN PRISON CELL
Sajjad Afghani dug a 23-foot-long tunnel inside his prison cell. Had he dug a little further, he and other terrorists might have managed to escape.
But the guards caught them, and 11 prisoners, including Afghani, were killed.
This was in July 1999. Five months later, in December 1999, five terrorists hijacked IC 814 that was supposed to fly from Kathmandu to Delhi.
The Harkat-ul-Mujahideen hijackers asked the pilot to divert the plane to Kandahar, Afghanistan.
The flight, with 175 people on board, was force-landed at Amritsar after being denied landing rights at Lahore. The hijackers then tried to land it at Kabul but couldn't because there was no night-landing facility. IC 814 was then taken to Dubai, where it was refuelled and 26 passengers and the body of Rupin Katyal, the flyer who was killed by a hijacker, were released. Finally it was taken to Kandahar, Afghanistan, where the passengers were kept hostage for a week.
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Masood Azhar founded Jaish-e-Mohammed, which was behind the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and also the 2019 Pulwama attack, in which 40 security personnel were killed. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was arrested for the kidnapping and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl.
Though the hijackers got the three terrorists, their aim of getting Sajjad Afghani's coffin didn't materialise.
Published By:
Priyanjali Narayan
Published On:
Sep 5, 2024
