Inside the Kandahar hijacking: what the government said and what actually happened

On 24 December 1999, at around 4 pm, Indian Airlines Flight 814, operating from Kathmandu to Delhi, was hijacked at gunpoint by Kashmiri terrorists. There were 190 passengers on board, along with 11 crew members.

The five terrorists took the aircraft to Amritsar, Lahore, Dubai, and finally Kandahar. One passenger, who had been recently married, was killed, and six others were injured.

At that time, I was working as the Special Correspondent of The Times of India in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. Only a few months earlier, the Kargil war had taken place.

The passengers remained trapped for a week and finally breathed a sigh of relief on 31 December 1999 when, to save the lives of the passengers, the government conceded to the terrorists’ demands. Three terrorists — Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh, and Mushtaq Zargar — who had been lodged in Jammu’s Kot Bhalwal Jail since 1993, were released and flown to Kandahar, where they were handed over to the hijackers. They were taken there along with then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and Civil Aviation Minister Sharad Yadav.

Among the hijacked passengers was my old friend A K Bhattacharya, who at the time was serving as a Divisional Forest Officer in Bhopal.

Bhattacharya’s daughter was a Class IX student in a school in Bhopal. An officer from the Prime Minister’s Office, who was also from Bhopal, arranged her interview, which was broadcast on Doordarshan. The girl made an appeal saying, “Even if my papa and mummy are not released, the terrorists should not be released.”

From Srinagar, I faxed a story to my office clearly stating that, despite strong opposition from Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, the three terrorists lodged in Kot Bhalwal Jail had already been released on the instructions of RAW chief A S Dulat, who had been sent by the central government. All three had been flown to Delhi on a special Indian Air Force aircraft. The Governor and the Chief Minister were present at this special meeting.

A Bihar-born officer, at whose home I often went for tea, provided me with full details of the meeting. I wrote the complete report, including who said what.

A short while later, I received a call from Manmohan, editor at Times News Service. In an angry tone, he complained that Padgaonkar (the editor) had just spoken to Brajesh Mishra, the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister. Padgaonkar had also said on television that the Government of India would not bow down and that militants would not be released.

I told him, “Send a reporter to Delhi airport. You will find the three terrorists who have been released from here. Instruct all editors not to tamper with my report.”

Senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office were misleading a senior editor, and the RAW chief’s decision proved costly.

After the Kandahar incident, responsibility for security at India’s airports was handed over to the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF). Prior to this, airport security was handled by the Central Reserve Police Force or state police forces.