Director Anubhav Sinha’s new Netflix series, IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, has shed new light on the infamous incident, which gripped the nation for a week in late 1999. Five hijackers took control of an Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu, and ultimately took it to Kandahar, where they entered into week-long negotiations with Indian authorities. Eventually, they secured the release of three high-profile terrorists, including Masood Azhar, in exchange of the hostages’ freedom. The negotiations were carried out on-ground in Kandahar by a four-member team comprising of two IB officials, and two representatives from the R&AW.
In a new interview with The Print, the chief of the R&AW at the time, AS Dulat, and Anand Arni, a former special secretary at the R&AW, who also happened to be a part of the negotiations team in Kandahar, spoke about the negotiations in Kandahar. While Dulat recalled that he received a few ‘desperate phone calls’ from the ground urging him to resolve the matter as soon as possible, Arni remembered the ups and downs of the negotiations, which were led by now-NSA Ajit Doval.
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“I was there at the first CCS (Cabinet Committee on Security) meeting after the hijack, the following day at 10 in the morning, and I can tell you the atmosphere that morning was that sooner or later, we will have to give in,” Dulat said. “The NSA, Brijesh Mishra, said, ‘I think you need to send a team of negotiators’. We decided to send two from each side, two from the IB and two from the R&AW. From the R&AW, we sent our two best experts on Pakistan, CD Sahay and Anand Arni, and from the IB there was the redoubtable Mr Doval… They had a very tough time on the ground, and Anand will describe that better, because I did get some desperate phone calls from there saying, ‘Hurry up and do something’.”
Dulat continued, “I remember getting a call from Ajit Doval on the morning of the 30th, and that was the day of the last Cabinet Committee on Security meeting, and he said, ‘Please, get this through quickly, it’s very difficult staying on here, these guys are telling us get the hell out of here or we’re not responsible for what happens’. I could feel for him, because it could not have been very pleasant.”
Manoj Pahwa as Mukul Mohan in IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack.
Asked how bad things were on the ground in Kandahar, Arni said, “Firstly, if you’re looking at the creature comforts, it was Ramzan, there was no food. The show said that they got food, it’s not true. It was only on the second day that we reached that the UN started flying in greasy so-called hamburgers from Peshawar. What they contained, I don’t know. The accommodation that we had left a lot to be desired. There was always that feeling that you’re friendless in a hostile country. Initially, the first four days, it didn’t matter, because there was an excitement of being there… Later, when it looked like things were going belly-up, somebody from the crew reminded us that seven Iranian diplomats had been assassinated in Mazar-i-Sharif a year before… It was a gnawing feeling in the back of one’s head.”
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He was also asked about the ‘unflattering’ portrayal of Doval on the show, to which he replied, “Mr Doval was conducting the talk, and he did a fair job. He kept the discussions going; we were negotiating mainly at night, maybe till around 12. On the 29th, we thought we had an agreement, but they backtracked on the 30th.”
Revealing the agreement that the Indian contingent arrived at with the terrorists on December 29, Arni said that the terrorists had agreed to releasing the hostages only in exchange of Masood Azhar, as opposed to the three high-profile names that they had originally demanded, which itself was a decline from the 105 names that they hand given initially. “If there was a bottle of scotch, we’d have opened it. But they backtracked on the morning of the 30th,” Arni said.
A file photo of the Indian Airlines flight IC-814 that was hijacked in December 1999.
Arni also spoke about the Taliban mediators that were present there, and admitted that they were ‘nervous’. He said, “Clearly they had their limitations. Muttawakil (foreign minister) was definitely nervous.” He recalled ‘an explosion’ that took place in the early hours of the morning of December 30, when the auxiliary power unit (APU) of the aircraft blew up. The man who went to check what had happened was ‘ashen’ because he thought that the ‘plane had blown up’. Arni said, “It was clear that (the Taliban) wasn’t in total control, they were embarrassed.”
The R&AW chief on the show was played by Aditya Srivastava, while the Arni character was played by Kumud Mishra. The lead negotiator, ostensibly Doval, was played by Manoj Pahwa, while two other members of the Indian contingent were played by Dibyendu Bhattacharya and Arvind Swamy. IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack opened to positive reviews, but attracted some controversy for its perceived misidentification of the terrorists’ religious identity.
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