EAM Jaishankar’s Personal Experience With The 1984 Flight Hijacking

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar made a significant revelation about the 1984 flight hijacking while interacting with the Indian community in Geneva on Friday.

Personal Experience During the Hijacking

Jaishankar spoke about the Netflix series “IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack,” which dramatizes the 1999 hijacking of the IC 814 Indian Airlines flight. He revealed that his father was a passenger on a hijacked flight in 1984, and notably, Jaishankar himself was part of the crisis management team.

“I haven’t seen the film, so I don’t want to comment,” Jaishankar said. “But I tell you something interesting which you may remember. In 1984, there was a hijacking… I was a very young officer. I was part of the team that was dealing with it. After 3-4 hours of the hijacking, I rang up my mother to tell her that I can’t come, there’s a hijacking. I discovered that my father was on that flight.”

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Crisis Management and Personal Impact

The flight in question ended up in Dubai, and fortunately, no lives were lost. Jaishankar described the experience as “interesting” because, on one hand, he was involved in managing the hijacking crisis, while on the other hand, he was also part of the affected families pressing for government action.

“It was interesting because on one hand, I was part of that team working on the hijacking, and on the other hand, I was part of the family members pressing the government on hijacking,” Jaishankar noted.

Controversy Surrounding the Netflix Series

The series “IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack,” directed by Anubhav Sinha, portrays the events of the 1999 hijacking of the IC 814 Indian Airlines flight. A recent Public Interest Litigation (PIL) sought to ban the series, alleging inaccuracies in the portrayal of the hijackers’ identities.

The PIL was withdrawn on September 6, after Netflix added a disclaimer clarifying the real names of the terrorists involved. The petitioner, Surjit Singh Yadav, had initially raised concerns that the series inaccurately assigned Hindu names to the real hijackers.

(WITH INPUTS FROM ANI)

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