Kandahar: hijack of IC-814, 1999
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Mistakes admitted in monitoring
The Times of India, Jul 3, 2015
Neelam Raaj
Man who monitored 1999 'Kandahar hijack' admits 'goof-up'
The man who monitored the crisis arising from the 1999 hijack of IC-814, former RA&W chief A S Dulat, has admitted in an exclusive interview to TOI that the Crisis Management Group (CMG) had "goofed up" the operation.
While he didn't go into the details of the goof-up and what exactly transpired at the five-hour CMG meeting on December 24 while the plane was parked in Amritsar, Dulat said that "no one in Delhi or Punjab wanted to bell the cat". In the meantime, the plane flew away, and with it the opportunity to gain an upper hand over the hijackers. Later, Dulat says "everyone shifted the blame to each other".
Speaking ahead of the launch of his book, 'Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years', Dulat said that the then Punjab police chief Sarabjit Singh, who was in charge of the situation when the plane was on the ground in Amritsar, said Delhi never told him that IC-814 was not to be allowed to take off. Singh did tell Delhi that he had at his disposal Punjab commandos trained in anti-terrorism operations who could storm the aircraft but Delhi's response was that it did not want any casualties.
After the plane flew off to Lahore - the next stop was Dubai and eventually Kandahar - Dulat writes that the "CMG degenerated into a blame game...with the cabinet secretary being head of the CMG as one target and NSG chief Nikhil Kumar, another."
He also criticized the handling of the hostage trade-off in 1989 when the daughter of the then Union home minister and current J&K CM Mufti Mohammed Sayeed was kidnapped. Dulat said, "Rubaiya's kidnapping is a classic case on how not to handle a hostage crisis. We did everything wrong. Because it was such a high-profile kidnap, every friend of Mufti appeared on the scene and was busy scoring points. So instead of releasing one militant - Hamid Sheikh - which was all the JKLF wanted, we released five."
He pointed out that the release of the four others didn't matter as much as the psychological impact of that trade-off. "They felt that they made Delhi bend."
Highjackers wanted to “fly west”
The Times of India, Jul 04 2015
Hijackers were willing to kill to `fly west': IC-814 pilot
Former Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) chief A S Dulat has again fuelled the debate on the handling of the IC-814 Kandahar hijack in 1999 by terming it a “goof-up“ as the Indian Airlines plane was allowed to fly out of India from Amritsar. But a book on the seven-day ordeal by the flight's commander, Captain Devi Sharan, points out that the hijackers were desperados ready to kill as many passengers as required to “fly west“. According to Sharan's book -`Flight Into Fear: The Captain's Story' -the five hijackers were armed with several hand grenades, four revolvers and a knife. They stormed the cockpit of the Kathmandu-Delhi flight on December 24, 1999, with 176 passengers on board when it had been airborne for 40 minutes and was over Lucknow.
Sharan landed the plane in Amritsar where the hijackers brought in three hostages to the business class and slit their throats. “As a pilot, my first duty is to safely fly my passengers,“ says Sharan, for unless he flew, a killing spree would follow. They (the hijackers) said take the aircraft west... I told them we cannot go beyond Delhi.“
After an argument, Sha ran managed to land the plane in Amritsar, where i spent possibly the most criti cal 49 minutes of what turn ed out to be a week-long cri sis. “I asked for fuel bowser (fuel truck used for refuelling planes)... The hijackers brought in three hostages (including Rupan Katyal who later died) to the business class and slit their throats... Then they brought four more people to business class (for the same reason),“ the book says.
At this point, Devi Sharan realized that unless he flies the plane the hijackers would go on a killing spree. Then the captain started the engine and took off. The aircraft barely had any fuel and the nearest airport it could have flown to was Lahore. But initially, Lahore did not permit the plane to land. Sharan looked for a field or road to land to minimize casualties as the plane was running out of fuel.
At the last minute, authorities at Lahore airport allowed Sharan to land. After refuelling, the plane went to Dubai Military Airport where the body of Katyal who was returning to Delhi after honeymoon in Nepal -was allowed to be taken out and 26 hostages, mainly children, women and senior citizens, were let off.
Doval’s role
‘Rahul’s claim not correct, Doval didn’t fly with Azhar’, March 12, 2019: The Times of India
Sources in the security establishment have refuted Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s statement that NSA Ajit Doval had accompanied Jaish-e-Muhammed chief Masood Azhar to Kandahar where he was freed in December 1999 to secure the release of passengers of a hijacked Indian Airlines plane.
“He (Doval) was not on the plane on which Azhar had to be flown to Kandahar to secure the release of 161 passengers on board IC-814,” a senior source said. He said Doval, then the additional director of Intelligence Bureau, had reached Kandahar ahead of Azhar’s release to negotiate with the ISIcontrolled hijackers and Taliban leaders supporting them: a claim which is in line with the accounts given by then home minister L K Advani and then RAW chief A S Dulat in their books ‘My Country, My Life’ and ‘Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years’ respectively.
Jaswant Singh, the then foreign minister, flew with Azhar and two others terrorists — Omar Sheikh, who later killed American journalist Daniel Pearl, and Mushtaq Zargar.
“The decision to release Azhar was taken by the Vajpayee government which decided to save the lives of 161 Indians whom the terrorists had vowed to eliminate if their demand for Azhar’s release was not conceded. Whether it was a good decision or a bad decision can be debated. But it cannot be pinned on officers mandated to carry out instructions of the day,” the source said.
The terrorists had begun by demanding the release of 36 terrorists from Indian prisons, besides a ransom of $200 million. While Doval and other Indian negotiators, who included his Intelligence Bureau colleague N S Sandhu and senior RAW officer C D Sahay, succeeded in getting the terrorists to scale down their demand, the latter threatened to kill the hostages if Azhar and Sheikh were not released.
R&AW chief A S Dulat’s recollections
Sep 8, 2024: The Times of India
Former R&AW chief A S Dulat was part of the Crisis Management Group formed hours after Air India IC-814 was hijacked from Kathmandu on Dec 24, 1999. With the hijack back in the headlines because of the release of a controversial web series, Himanshi Dhawan spoke to Dulat, who wrote about the incident in his book ‘Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years’, about how it really played out
■ What do you think of the controversy surrounding the OTT series?
I have only seen some parts of the series, so I don’t know how far removed from reality it is. But I feel unnecessary noise is being made about it. The terrorists did use code names like Bhola and Shankar. Also, let’s not forget that it is a show after all. How accurate or correct is for people to decide.
■ What is your memory of that week in December 1999?
If I think back to that one week, it was a lot of stress for everybody. Most of all for the PM (Atal Bihari Vajpayee) who had to take a call one way or the other and it was not an easy call. The main concern for everybody was that our passengers should come back safe and sound.
■ Soon after the plane was hijacked, it landed in Amritsar. There has been criticism that despite the plane being on Indian soil, no action was taken by the govt.
When the plane landed in Amritsar, our immediate reaction was ‘thank god, that’s great’ but once we had the plane, we didn’t know what to do with it. There was indecision on Delhi’s part as to whether to allow the plane to take off or not. In Amritsar, did we have an option to storm the plane? I think we did, but it was not an easy option. It would have meant casualties; there would have been bloodshed. Punjab CM said very clearly that he didn’t want bloodshed. Delhi also didn’t want bloodshed. We had the commandos in place ready to storm the plane. Amritsar was a goof- up, yes. And once the plane left Amritsar, we had no options. People talk a lot about options that we could have exercised, that we could have done this or that. We thought of storming the plane like the Israelis did in Entebbe airport in 1976. But we were in completely hostile territory. We had no help from the Taliban. In hindsight, not knowing how to handle it was the best way to handle it. In the end, we got all our passengers back safe except for a sole casualty.
■ Was there passing the buck once the plane was outside Indian airspace?
There was no passing the buck. There was a tense three hours, till the plane left Amritsar. No one was blaming each other, but there was no one taking a decision either.
■ Did R&AW have prior intelligence about the hijack?
That is rubbish. If R&AW had an indication, why would its Kathmandu station chief (Shashi Bhushan Singh Tomar) be on the plane?
■ Did the fact that Tomar (who was also NK Singh’s brother-in-law) was on the plane impact the govt’s decisions?
No one except NK Singh and I knew he was on the plane. It had nothing to do with what was decided. These rumours are all rubbish.
■ India was called soft on terrorism after the Kandahar hijack.
There is no such thing as a soft or hard state. We always say that we will not talk to terrorists, but everyone gives in. It happens all over the world. Look at Israel for instance. When UPA came to power, this matter was raised in Parliament and UPA govt said we will never give in to terrorists. BJP’s Jaswant Singh responded and said as a matter of policy and principle we should not give in to terrorists, but there will be occasions when you will have to give in for the safety of your people.
■ You were tasked with convincing J&K CM Farooq Abdullah to release Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar who were incarcerated in a Srinagar prison. What was that meeting like?
I bore the brunt of it when I had to go to J&K CM to seek the release of Masood Azhar and Zargar. He gave me hell. He told me ‘you will have to pay heavily for this.’ He was most unwilling to release Zargar but I managed to prevail in the end.
■ Does it weigh on your conscience considering Azhar’s role in so many terror attacks after his release?
We did the best possible thing that could be done in that situation.
■ Do you think the Indian govt would react very differently if such an incident were to happen now?
The players are different, atmospherics are different. It would be choreographed differently. PM Modi is not PM Vajpayee.
■ The series makes it appear that intelligence officers were clueless about the hijackers.
On Dec 25, we had a clear indication who the principal actors were and we knew that Masood Azhar’s brother Ibrahim Athar Alvi was behind it. By the end of the week when the demands came, we knew ISI was behind it. Our officers in the Mumbai police, including Hemant Karkare (who was later killed in the 2008 Mumbai attacks), had traced the hijackers because their passports had been issued from Mumbai.
■ What diplomatic efforts were made to seek release of the passengers in Dubai and Kandahar?
Then external affairs minister Jaswant Singh bore the brunt of it. He was a very lonely figure. He tried to reach out to everybody, but no one was willing to take his call. He even tried to reach out to Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil but was not successful. We did not have any relations with the Taliban.
