The hijack of the Indian Airlines flight 814 commonly known as ‘IC 814,’ is in the news more than two decades later, following the release of a Netflix series based on the incident. The Anubhav Sinha directed series titled IC 814 – The Kandahar Hijack starring Vijay Varma, Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Aravind Swamy and Dia Mirza in key roles has sparked a controversy over the depiction of the hijackers involved in the longest ever hijack in India’s history. The IC 814 en route to New Delhi from Kathmandu was hijacked as soon as it entered Indian airspace and flown to different locations including Amritsar, Lahore and Dubai before finally landing in the then Taliban ruled Kandahar in Afghanistan after eight long days. The controversy surrounding the series erupted from right wing social media handles over the ‘Hindu’ code names used in the series to identify the hijackers. However government data substantiates that these code names were originally used by the hijackers during the incident and the series has just incorporated it. Whatsoever, like the recent trend goes, the content head of Netflix India Monika Shergill was summoned by the Union information and broadcasting ministry and demanded an explanation regarding the ‘problematic’ depiction of the hijackers in the series. Besides the incorporation of ‘Hindu’ code names, the government was also reportedly disturbed by the portrayal of the negotiation procedures headed by the current National security advisor Ajit Doval and the alleged omission of the role played by Pakistani intelligence agencies in the hijack. However the obvious reason for this rage as pointed out by many is that the BJP led government, which constantly boasts of its advancements and priorities in ensuring national security has its head heated up on the digging up of one of the grave intelligence and strategic failures that happened during the reign of its tall leaders. Several blatant lapses were flagged with regard to the government’s handling of the crisis situation. This included the Prime Minister of the BJP led coalition regime, Atal Bihari Vajpayee not being informed of the hijack for about one hour. This traced to lapses from the part of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and the RAW. Another dangerous strategic failure was allowing the plane to take off from a military airport in Amritsar. However, after eight long days, India gave into the demands of hijackers to release three militants- Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar- in return for the hostages. One of the released militants, Masood Azhar, later went on to form Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terror outfit accused of orchestrating several attacks on India including the 2019 Pulwama attack.
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