Remembering IC-814 hijacking and birth of Pak terror monster Masood Azhar

The 1999 IC-814 hijacking has again caught the public eye through a fictional series broadcast over an OTT platform

The hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 from Kathmandu to Delhi on the Christmas Eve of the new millennium has been the  subject of lots of books and Bollywood movies.

A file photo of Indian Airlines' IC-814 aircraft at Taliban-ruled Kandahar

The 1999 hijacking has again caught the public eye through a fictional series broadcast over an OTT platform.

The fictional drama series in its credits, especially thanks two IPS officers, who had nothing to do with counter-terrorism in Indian intelligence agencies at any point of time during their careers.

One of them worked in the Intelligence Bureau throughout his life and was joint director of, the Multi-Agency Centre during the 26/11 Mumbai massacre. The other's crowning glory was the Director, Special Protection Group, whose task is to protect the Prime Minister of India.

However, the drama series has reopened wounds of an era when the West was still gloating over the defeat of the communist Soviet Union at the hands of Afghan Mujahideens, a decade before the hijacking and the breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The so-called freedom fighters were branded as terrorists by the same West after 9/11 attacks. This was the time when Pakistan-sponsored terrorists were celebrated in Jammu and Kashmir by Western media and their likes as macho Pathans and the Anglo-Saxon world, with the exception of France had imposed total sanctions on India for testing nuclear weapons at Pokhran in May 1998. India was declared a pariah state for protecting its own from its northern and western neighbors

The conspiracy to hijack IC-814 was hatched in Rawalpindi GHQ by Pakistani intelligence agency with the sole purpose of forcing the Indian government to release Harkat-ul-Ansar general secretary Masood Azhar from Jammu jail after his fellow commander Sajjad Afghani (he was from Occupied Kashmir and not an Afghan) was killed during an alleged jailbreak at Kot Balwal on July 15, 1999.

Fearing that Indian intelligence agencies would also neutralize Azhar, the hijack was planned by his brother Mohammed Ibrahim Athar Alvi and associates using the ISI network in Kathmandu.

 

Indian intelligence had no clue of hijacking plan

The fact that Indian intelligence had no clue to the hijacking plan was evident from the presence of an RAW operative in the IC-814 flight. This operative retired from RAW in May 2022.

Such was the Indian global leverage at that time that the Indian Ambassador to UAE was not even allowed to enter the Abu Dhabi base where the hijacked plane had landed. Since India had no connection with the ruling Taliban, the entire national security establishment was caught pants down in Kandahar, where the hostage-terrorist exchange took place and Masood Azhar, another Harkat-ul-Ansar terrorist Omar Saeed Sheikh and a token Kashmiri terrorist Mushtaq Zargar were set free.

The initial demand of Pakistani terrorists was the body of Sajjad Afghani, 35 other terrorists and USD 200 million.

After being set free Azhar went to meet then Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar as the two had a connection through Deobandi Binori Mosque in Karachi, Pakistan. While India was humiliated by the West, drowned in Christmas-New Year festivities , looking the other way, Azhar formed the Jaish-e-Mohammed group in Bahawalpur, Punjab, Pakistan, and wreaked terror on India.

From the 2001 J&K Assembly attacks to Parliament attacks to the 2019 Pulwana attack, Azhar and his younger brother Rauf Asghar Alvi have bled India through the murder of hundreds of innocents with the help of Pakistani deep state. Even today, Azhar has a head of state level protection in a safe house in Pakistan with Rauf Asghar carrying the blood bath in Jammu and Kashmir with impunity.

Just like the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 attacks also played havoc with the morale of India but this time there was prior actionable intelligence. But both times, tough decision-making leadership was missing.

(The author covered the IC-814 hijacking for the Hindustan Times)