Indian Airlines flight 814 hijacking
Taliban militia in front of the hijacked plane.
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| Hijacking | |
|---|---|
| Date | 24 December 1999 – 31 December 1999 |
| Site | Hijacked in Indian airspace between Kathmandu, Nepal and Delhi, India; landed at Amritsar, India; Lahore, Pakistan; Dubai. United Arab Emirates and Kandahar, Afghanistan. |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Airbus A300B2-101 |
| Operator | Indian Airlines |
| Registration | VT-EDW |
| Flight origin |
Tribhuvan International Airport Kathmandu, Nepal |
| Destination | Indira Gandhi International Airport Delhi, India |
| Passengers | 176 |
| Crew | 15 |
| Fatalities | 1 (Ripan Katyal) |
| Injuries | 17 |
| Survivors | 190 |
Indian Airlines Flight 814 commonly known as IC 814 was an Indian Airlines Airbus A300 en route from Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal to Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, India on Friday, 24 December 1999, when it was hijacked. Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was accused of the hijacking with the support and active assistance from ISI.
The aircraft was hijacked by gunmen shortly after it entered Indian airspace at about 17:30 IST. Hijackers ordered the aircraft to be flown to several locations. After touching down in Amritsar, Lahore and Dubai, the hijackers finally forced the aircraft to land in Kandahar, Afghanistan, which at the time was controlled by the Taliban. The hijackers released 27 of 176 passengers in Dubai but fatally stabbed one and wounded several others.
At that time, most of Afghanistan, including Kandahar where the plane landed, was under Taliban control. Initially it was thought that Taliban is on Indian side but later it became apparent that they are working in collaboration with ISI. Taliban fighters surrounded the aircraft to prevent any Indian military intervention, which was found by current RAW chief Ajit Doval when he landed there and they also found two ISI men were on the tarmac and others soon joined them in which one was a lieutenant colonel and the other a major. Doval said that if the Taliban hijackers did not have ISI support, India could have resolved the crisis.
The motive for the hijacking appears to have been to secure the release of Islamist figures held in prison in India. The hostage crisis lasted for seven days and ended after India agreed to release three militants – Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Masood Azhar. These militants have since been implicated in other terrorist actions, such as the kidnap and murder of Daniel Pearl and Mumbai terror attacks. The hijacking has been seen as one of the millennium attack plots by al-Qaeda-linked jihadists.
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Wikipedia