IC814 How did Indian Airlines Flight 814 arrive in Kandahar and what happened next?

 

IC814 How did Indian Airlines Flight 814 arrive in Kandahar and what happened next?

The scenes that are most often seen on TV screens after a plane is hijacked are of security personnel and vehicles moving rapidly around the plane.

But two decades ago, journalists were shocked when, instead of an armored vehicle, they saw a man on a bicycle circling the hijacked plane at the airport in Kandahar province, Afghanistan.

This story is about an Indian plane that was hijacked after taking off and then landed at three airports before being flown to Kandahar.

In history, the importance of Kandahar province in Afghanistan was in no way less than Kabul. But before the nineties, the international media did not give much importance to this province.

However, during the nineties, two major events that kept this region at the center of world attention were the emergence of the Taliban and the capture of Kandahar, and the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane.

When and where was the Indian plane hijacked?

It was on December 24, 1999, when Indian Airlines flight 814 flew from Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, to New Delhi, the capital of India. In addition to 176 passengers, there were 15 crew members on board the Airbus, including the pilots.

According to media reports, the passengers were very happy to depart for their destination, but their happiness did not last long because when the plane entered Indian airspace, a masked man got up and walked towards the cockpit.

This masked man threatened the pilot of the plane that if he did not turn the plane towards Lahore in the west instead of Lucknow, he would blow up the plane with a bomb.

At the same time, his four other masked companions also stood up and took up positions in different parts of the plane.

Where did the plane go before Kandahar Airport?

 

Although the pilot of the plane, Captain Devi Sharan, diverted the plane to Lahore instead of Delhi, he did not have enough fuel for this journey. This was because the hijackers agreed to land the plane in the city of Amritsar in Indian Punjab.

According to media reports, upon the plane's landing, the Indian police had prepared to take action against the hijackers and perhaps the hijackers, sensing this threat, forced the pilot of the plane to fly to Lahore without refueling.

Initially, Pakistani authorities did not allow the plane to land in Lahore and the airport lights were turned off for this purpose.

But due to pressure from the hijackers, the pilot had no choice but to refuel at Lahore Airport and was finally allowed to land the plane at Lahore Airport.

However, after refueling, Pakistani authorities asked the pilot of the plane to leave Lahore Airport immediately.

After Lahore, the plane reached Dubai Airport, where the hijackers allowed 27 passengers to disembark.

According to media reports, Indian authorities had requested permission from the United Arab Emirates authorities to take action to free the plane from the hijackers at Dubai Airport, but they refused.

The plane then reached the airport in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city, and remained there until the hijacking ende

Kandahar Airport the center of world attention

A few hours after the plane landed in Kandahar, journalists began arriving there.

Since Kandahar Airport is close to Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, representatives from local and international media were the first to arrive in Quetta.

The first journalists from Quetta to arrive in Kandahar were Ayub Tareen of the BBC Pashto service in Quetta, while those who arrived after them included senior journalist Shahzad Zulfiqar and renowned photographer Banaras Khan of AFP.

Despite the passage of two decades, all the scenes from the beginning to the end of the hijacking are still in front of these people’s eyes.

Ayub Tareen said that he stayed in a hotel in Kandahar on the first day. He said that the incident took place in the month of Ramadan.

“When we got up for Sehri, the people in the hotel started staring at us, wondering where this beardless creature had come from. The people in the hotel were unaware that an Indian plane had been hijacked and brought to their city's airport.

Cycling and motorcycling?

Prince Zulfiqar said that the strangest thing he saw at Kandahar Airport was a person coming to the airport on a bicycle and circling the plane on the same bicycle.

According to Banaras Khan, those performing security duties there used to patrol on bicycles or motorcycles.

He said that we were surprised that on such occasions there should be armored vehicles and modern security equipment, but there was nothing like that.

According to Prince Zulfiqar, upon his inquiry, he was told that the person who mostly used to cycle around on a bicycle was an SHO-rank official in the police of the airport area.

Severe cold and lack of facilities?

Prince Zulfiqar said that since he had gone to cover an important event, he did not want to leave the airport at night because any major incident could happen at night.

He said that in those days it was bitterly cold and there was no proper accommodation.

He said that they only had vehicles to protect themselves from the extreme cold. ‘The journalists who had vehicles kept them running continuously to protect themselves from the cold during the days they were there, and they kept trying to protect themselves from the cold by sitting inside the vehicles.’

‘I did not even untie the shoes I had worn from Quetta for two or three days due to the extreme cold and the lack of proper sleeping arrangements there.’

He said that where they could not sleep due to the lack of proper arrangements in the cold, it was not possible for anyone to get enough sleep, given the importance of this important event, so the journalists present there decided to sleep for four hours in turn.

Despite the danger, a big fire near the plane?

Since there was no adequate arrangement to avoid the cold at the airport, especially near the plane, the Taliban security personnel solved the problem by burning wood in the field.

He said that this wood was not burned very far away, but very close to the plane.

He said that it is not appropriate to light a fire under any plane, but the Taliban did not care about this at all and kept lighting a fire very close to it without taking care of it.

Facing problems with food and drink?

Prince Zulfiqar said that just as the journalists were facing problems with accommodation, they were also facing this problem with food and drink.

He said that there were more problems in this regard for the first one or two days, but later this problem was solved to some extent because food was brought there in a Red Cross plane. However, some journalists also kept going to the city to eat.

Ayub Tareen said that the Taliban were providing food and drink to the passengers and other people on the plane.

He said that the Taliban’s food package consisted of a loaf of bread, a leg piece and a mallet in a plastic bag.

He said that the passengers on the plane objected to this food, saying that they could not eat this food all the time.

He said that after this, the food problem was solved because food from five-star hotels started coming on a UN plane from Islamabad.

Preparation for commando action

Banaras Khan said that when the problem was not resolved in the first day or two, signs of an action by the Taliban were seen.

He said that ‘there was no special force for this, but the same Taliban who were at the airport wore the uniform that is usually worn by Air Force personnel over their clothes, but in practice, no action was taken by the Taliban to avoid any harm.’

However, Prince Zulfiqar said that the people who were at the airport or those who came and went from the Taliban had no experience in dealing with such a situation.

Prince Zulfiqar said that during this time, the Taliban told him that the Indian government had also carried out a commando action, but they did not allow it.

He said that the Taliban had said that they could not allow any foreign force to operate on their soil.

The shutdown of the aircraft’s air conditioning

Banaras Khan said that on the third day of the hijacking, the air conditioning system of the plane stopped working.

He said that the air conditioning system was essential to provide a better environment to the hostage passengers, but when the air conditioning system stopped, the unrest increased.

He said that since Indian officials were continuously coming to Kandahar Airport, Indian engineers also came with them.

He said that one of these Indian engineers was taken inside and he fixed the fault and left.

He said that after fixing the fault, when the Indian engineers were forced by journalists to say something, they said that the hijackers did not let them go to any other part of the plane but took them to the place where the fault was.

He said that despite the great efforts of the journalists, the Indian engineers did not talk much, but they said that ‘the hijackers are not ordinary hijackers but they also have a lot of information about the plane.’

Was the person who came to clean the plane the only source of information about the plight of the passengers?

Prince Zulfiqar said that the hijackers used to leave one person to clean the plane.

He said that this one person was the source of information about the condition of the passengers on the plane.

He said that whenever that person came out, he would tell them that the passengers were in great distress.

He said that the person who cleaned the plane used to tell them that the hijackers did not let them talk to any of the passengers, but asked them to finish their work quickly and leave.

Did the Indians understand that they were trapped?

Prince Zulfiqar said that several Indian officials came out for negotiations and were talking to the Taliban officials.

He said that the Indian authorities would probably try very hard not to listen to the hijackers, but from the evidence they saw there, they understood that this was not possible.

“They understood that they were trapped and there was no way out, which forced them to bow down to the hijackers and release the militants for whose release the plane was hijacked.”

Prince Zulfiqar said that until the hijacking, Kandahar Airport was a hub for the movement of high-ranking Taliban officials and Indian officials.

He said that former Foreign Minister Abdul Wakil Mutawakil and former Aviation Minister and Governor of Kandahar Mullah Akhtar Usmani, as well as former Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, were prominent among the prominent officials of the Taliban government who used to visit there.

He said that Jaswant Singh had to visit Kandahar Airport twice.

Once he came for negotiations, while the second time he came on the day when Maulana Masood Azhar, Mushtaq Zargar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who were imprisoned in Indian jails, were released and brought to Kandahar Airport on the demand of the hijackers.

He said that on the day the plane dropped, two planes arrived from India, one of which was carrying Jaswant Singh.

He said that the other plane probably brought the three militants, including Maulana Masood Azhar.

Arrival of the ambulance before the drop scene and recovery of the hijackers from the plane

Prince Zulfiqar said that before the drop scene of the hijacking, an ambulance arrived and parked near the plane.

He said that five masked hijackers came down from the front side of the plane hanging from a rope.

He said that they got down with lightning speed like commandos and got into the ambulance.

He said that he saw the three militants who were released, including Maulana Masood Azhar, and they probably also got into the same ambulance that contained the hijackers.

He said it was not known where the men left the airport, but the hijackers and the released militants had been ordered by Taliban authorities to leave Afghanistan within two hours.

Passengers’ happiness?

Prince Zulfiqar said that the hijacked plane was very close to where the journalists were standing.

He said that although the passengers were not allowed to go near the journalists, the journalists could see their faces clearly.

He said that as they got off the hijacked plane and climbed the stairs to enter the other plane, they were so happy that they felt as if they had been given a new life.