IC 814 newlyweds: Burger destroyed our honeymoon photos, but we emerged stronger (2024)

The mist was rolling in on the majestic hills of Nagarkot in Nepal as the newly-weds posed for the camera. Ipseeta Menon and her husband Bipin wanted to capture every moment of their honeymoon. Soaking in the beauty, the newly-weds knew that once back in Delhi, Ipseeta, a dentist, and Bipin, a civil servant, would be separated by the rigours of daily life. But they knew they were creating memories of a lifetime, and photographed most of those sweet moments.

Little did the Menons know that their lives were going to change forever, and the photographs would be lost to the cruelty of terrorists.

The world has heard of newly-weds Rachna and Rupin Katyal of IC 814, the Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Delhi that was hijacked to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1999.

It isn't common knowledge that there were 26 honeymooning couples on that ill-fated flight. Ipseeta, 24, and Bipin, 28, were two of them. They had got married just 13 days ago.

What makes their story special is when most other couples got separated as the hijackers moved passengers around, the Menons were somehow spared. For a week, they held hands, comforted one another, and in the face of death, whispered sweet nothings into each other's ears.

They lost all their honeymoon photographs when one of the five hijackers, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, who went by the codename 'Burger', exposed the rolls of their camera to light. Those moments when they strolled on Kathmandu's roads remain etched only in their memories now, as do each of those tense moments under the shadow of guns and murderous knives.

What Ipseeta and Bipin Menon went through and what they emerged with gives a very personal perspective of the 1999 hijacking horror that is being reevaluated and dissected after 25 years because of Anubhav Sinha's Netflix series IC 814 - The Kandahar Hijack.

The discussion has been more on the controversy over the names, and the facts that Sinha took liberty to not stick to. However, the story of the Menons gives us a look into what the passengers went through and how they survived those eight days.

FROM HONEYMOONERS' HEAVEN TO HIJACKERS' HELL

The flight to Delhi from Kathmandu on December 24, 1999, was delayed by a few hours and the boarding started at 4 pm.

Once the passengers settled in for the 45-minute flight, snacks were served by the smiling cabin crew.

"As the trays were cleared away, I gazed through the window, and was captivated by the Himalayas," Bipin Menon tells India Today Digital. "At that very moment, the hijacking was announced," he says.

"'This is a hijack. This is a hijack' said a man with a gun in his hand. That the gun trembled showed he was a novice terrorist," says Bipin. "The pilot soon announced, 'please cooperate with them'," says Bipin.

Captain Devi Sharan was the pilot, and he was held at gunpoint by two of the five hijackers.

The five hijackers were Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Shakir, Mistry, Shahid Akhtar Sayed and Ibrahim Athar, members of the Pakistan-based Islamist terror group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM).

All the hijackers used codenames. Sunny Ahmed Qazi used the codename 'Burger', Shakir was 'Shankar', Mistri was 'Bhola', and Sayed 'Doctor', and Athar 'Chief', according to a foreign ministry statement. The passengers refer to the terrorists with these assumed names, because those are what they heard.

After the pilot confirmed that the plane had been hijacked, Ipseeta turned towards Bipin in absolute shock.

"I asked him, 'hijack? Are the kids just playing some kind of prank?' They looked so young to me,'" Ipseeta tells India Today Digital.

That it was a hijacking and no prank became evident soon.

PASSENGERS WERE BLINDFOLDED, ASKED TO KEEP HEAD DOWN

"After a while, when the hijackers started threatening people and pushing the air hostess around, it slowly started to sink in," says Ipseeta.

Both went numb with fear, says Bipin, and held each other's hands.

It's very fresh in Ipseeta's memory, as if it happened just yesterday, not 25 years ago. "I remember, even in that situation, he would calm me down by simply holding my hand."

The hijackers had asked the passengers to pull down the plane's window blinds. They didn't have any clue as to where the plane was flying to or hovering over.

The hijackers shifted some of the passengers from economy to business and vice versa. This was when several couples, including Rachna and Rupin Katyal, got separated.

All the passengers were commanded to keep their heads low. The young male passengers were asked to blindfold themselves.

The plane was first taken to Amritsar for refuelling. As the refuelling was delayed, the hijackers forced Captain Devi Sharan to take off from Amritsar. The plane was commandeered to Lahore and hovered dangerously over the city with a near-empty tank. After desperate calls from Captain Sharan and realising that the plane would crash, the Pakistani authorities budged, and allowed the plane to land at Lahore.

After refuelling at Lahore, the plane was taken to Kabul, where there was no night-landing facility. IC 814 couldn't have kept airborne for all those hours till sunrise, and headed to the UAE. It was allowed to land at Dubai's Al Minhad Air Base.

SITTING HUNCHED AND BLINDFOLDED FOR HOURS ON IC 814

Finally, in Dubai, some passengers were released, and the situation relaxed a bit, but not for all onboard the hijacked IC 814.

"For women, it was a bit more relaxing. I remember after we landed in Dubai, one of the hijackers came up to me and tapped, 'You can sit up straight now. He did not allow my husband to do the same," Ipseeta tells India Today Digital.

Another woman sat close to them. Also back from her honeymoon, was Rachna Katyal. Her husband, Rupin Katyal, had been separated from her, and she was anxious and sobbing. The passenger seated next to the Menons was consoling Rachna.

They weren't aware that Rupin, who had been taken to the business class, had been murdered by the hijackers. It was Sunny Ahmed Qazi, who went by the codename 'Doctor', who slit his throat and also stabbed another passenger.

In Dubai, at the request of the authorities, the hijackers released 26 women and children. Rupin's body was also thrown off the plane.

IC 814 IN KANDAHAR, AND THE CYCLIST WITH AN AK 47

Both Ipseeta and Bipin kept hoping that they would be rescued anytime.

When IC 814 landed in Kandahar on December 25, after taking off from Dubai, the hijackers seemed relaxed as the negotiations started. The threat in their voices went down, and the window blinds went up.

On peeping outside, Bipin was shocked.

"To see some people cycling with an AK-47 strung over their shoulders. It was a strange sight," he says.

They were in Kandahar, in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a country with which India had snapped all diplomatic ties.

'BURGER DESTROYED ALL OUR HONEYMOON PHOTOS'

Then the hijackers came and emptied the bags to see if there were cameras. They were scared that they might be photographed.

"Burger exposed all our reels. I requested him not to do so, saying, 'Your photos aren’t in there, why spoil them?' But he didn’t listen," says Ipseeta.

"I was waiting to reach Delhi so that I could get the film rolls developed, but he ruined everything. He exposed all the reels in my camera, even the ones in my camera bag. Our honeymoon memories were all gone," laments Ipseeta.

She says she especially misses the Nagarkot photos. "That beautiful weather with the mist rolling in. I’m sure the pictures would’ve turned out great, but we will never get to see them. They’re just memories now, held in both our hearts now," she adds.

It was the morning of December 25, 1999. And the passengers had already been on the plane for over 16 hours amid uncertainty.

The plane with 155 people on board would stay on the tarmac for a week. The toilets would get blocked and the cabin stink of human waste.

It was 'Burger' who became friendlier, the Menons say. "We didn't see 'Chief' much as he was mostly in the cockpit. The other three remained mostly silent," says Ipseeta.

"'Doctor' spoke about the atrocities committed in Kashmir and praised Islam," says Ipseeta. "However, he did not have the gift of the gab like 'Burger', and much of his Urdu was incomprehensible," she adds.

How did the around 150 people on board IC 814 survive eight days on the plane?

SURVIVING ON ORANGES, MILK TO AVOID CLOGGED TOILETS

Trapped in the cabin for a week, the passengers being held hostage were served at least one meal a day.

"After landing in Kandahar, we were given some food. At least once a day we would get, like, Afghani roti, chicken, fruits and milk," Ipseeta tells India Today Digital.

But most passengers didn't eat.

"I can speak for myself — I didn’t eat much because of the washroom situation and my health complications. I remember surviving on just an orange and some milk," she adds.

Washrooms were one of the biggest issues. There were six washrooms, but the hijackers had reserved two for themselves. With days passing, only two washrooms remained functional for passengers to use.

"By the end, there were only two functioning washrooms for 155 passengers," says Ipseeta of the harrowing time. She even developed a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) due to unclean toilets.

Though cleaners came in, not much changed.

With time, the plane's air conditioners also stopped working. But this was the chilling winter of December.

"Luckily, I had taken a blanket from an air hostess before the hijacking, and with that one blanket, the two of us tried to keep warm. Sometimes he [Bipin] would take it, sometimes I would. But it wasn’t even a big blanket, just one of those small shawl-like blankets airlines give out," recounts Ipseeta.

The passengers had to keep seated for hours on end. They had to seek permission from the hijackers and inform them of their discomfort to be able to get up and walk "for a few minutes".

The first and the last days in captivity were the worst, the Menons tell India Today Digital.

SAY YOUR LAST PRAYERS: IC 814 HIJACKERS TO PASSENGERS

It was the seventh day of captivity for the passengers when the hijackers made an announcement that hit like a bombshell.

"The Indian negotiators do not care for your wellbeing and are busy shopping for almonds in the markets of Kandahar," one of the hijackers said in a chilling tone, writes Bipin in his book 'The Last Sunset Of The Millennium At Kandahar'. "He said they had no option but to shoot the passengers one by one."

"The hijacker said pray to whichever God you believe in," recalls Ipseeta.

After moments of pin-drop silence, the IC 814 cabin rang with the wails of horrified passengers.

"It was like a big meteor hitting us. I visualised that the hijackers would line us up one by one and then shoot us in the temple and dump our bodies on the tarmac," writes Bipin.

Bipin tried to console Ipseeta, who kept sobbing, and then fell asleep.

'BURGER CAME RUSHING IN WITH WICKED GLEAM ON HIS FACE'

"As we were all preparing for the worst, Burger came rushing in. We were all tensed, but that smile on his face said it all. It was that wicked gleam that conveyed the message that they had negotiated hard and managed to extract what they wanted," narrates Bipin.

"Suddenly, someone woke me up. I shot up, panicking, thinking my turn had come to be shot," recounts Ipseeta of those tense moments. "But that nudge was from my husband, and he said negotiations might succeed."

Not long after that, the hijackers left the plane and the passengers were released. But the Menons were separated for the first time since they boarded the IC 814 in Kahmandu on December 24.

"The walk down those stairs — I'll never forget that moment. Fresh air after eight days, it was almost evening, and that was the first time I had been separated from Bipin. It wasn’t until we reached the aircraft that would take us back to India that we finally reunited," says Ipseeta.

SUNSET OF THE MILLENNIUM AND DECADES OF TOGETHERNESS

"On the tarmac, the first thing I noticed was the sunset. The sun was setting over the hills surrounding Kandahar, and it struck me as beautiful," Bipin recalls, the last sunset of 1999.

The couple, who had been married through an arranged match just 20 days earlier, faced life-and-death challenges and the toughest tests of their lives. Looking back, Ipseeta says, ""Those eight days undoubtedly strengthened our relationship".

"We were newly-weds and could not have had enough time to develop deep closeness. But facing death so closely early on in our relationship, brought us closer", she adds.

Bipin echoes her thoughts.

"It's adversities that get you closer to one another. We understood that even in dire situations, if we remained calm, we could get through whatever life has to throw at us," says Bipin.

Back in Delhi, the new millennium heralded a new life and a fresh beginning.

Bipin would go back to his office, and Ipseeta to her clinic. Through thick and thin they would remember how they dodged death together.

Twenty-four years later, the couple sat together and watched the Netflix series 'IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack', directed by Anubhav Sinha, released on August 29.

But this story does not end here.

Ipseeta and Bipin also remember narrating about their plane being hijacked to their daughter, Shivangi, when she was five. She researched about the IC 814 hijacking and aviation in general, and got hooked on planes.

Shivangi is a trainee pilot now with Air India Express, and soon will take to the free skies herself. This is how this IC 814 story ends -- with love, strength and hope.