Former Director General of Police of Punjab, Sarabjit Singh, who found himself at the centre of the action when a hijacked Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu landed in Amritsar in December 1999, recalled the back-and-forth that he was having with authorities in New Delhi. Flight IC 814 was grounded in Amritsar for around 45 minutes, before it took off again and eventually touched down in Kandahar, where it remained for several days while the Indian authorities negotiated the release of the hostages with the terrorists. Letting the plane take off from Amritsar was seen as a major lapse on the part of the Indian authorities, because after that, it was in hostile territory. The events of the hijacking were recently dramatised in a Netflix series, titled IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack.
In an interview with The Tribune, Sarabjit Singh said that he learned about the hijack from the news. He was in Chandigarh, but based on a hunch, he instructed that two companies of commandos be posted at Amritsar airport just in case. He said that he was on the line with the then IB chief Shyamal Dutta, and the former R&AW chief AS Dulat. In the meantime, Sarabjit Singh said, the then DIG Border, Jaswinder Singh, had reached the ATC tower at the Amritsar airport, and had established contact with the flight captain, Devi Sharan.
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He said, “My first reaction, when I was told that the plane had landed in Amritsar, before I could talk to Delhi, was, ‘Don’t refuel’. Devi Sharan was stressing, ‘Please give us fuel, please give us fuel’. In the meantime, Delhi is telling me to do something, and I said, ‘Look, I have two companies out there, they’re armed with automatic weapons, but we don’t have any equipment specific to hijacking. We don’t even have a ladder to reach the plane. Shooting will take place. And if shooting takes place, I cannot tell you how many will die’.”
Sarabjit told Shyamal Dutta that ground forces cannot see inside the plane and have no idea how many people would be harmed if they were to storm the cabin. Shyamal Dutta asked Sarabjit, “Can’t you puncture the aircraft?” Sarabjit recalled his response, and said, “I had a laugh, and I told him, ‘This isn’t a scooter tyre. These are huge wheels, all tubeless, bullets won’t do anything’.” In the meantime, Jaswinder was able to deny the refuelling, because ‘the bowser people had gone for a meal’, Sarabjit said. He added, “He called for the bowser, and without telling me, he had stationed two guys on the bowser to disable the wheels. My fear was that any sort of action would trigger a reaction from the hijackers inside the plane.”
A file photo of the Indian Airlines flight IC-814 that was hijacked in December 1999.
During this whole time, Sarabjit said, Devi Sharan was continuously ‘pleading’ for the plane to be refuelled. He even told the ATC that the hijackers had killed a passenger. “Jaswinder said, ‘Sir, they’ve killed a person’. I said, ‘Have they thrown a body outside? No? Then hang on. I’m not going to believe it till a body is thrown out’.”
Read more – Who was ‘the ghost passenger of IC 814’?: Ex RAW chief AS Dulat reveals hostage’s identity, says he could’ve been ‘beheaded’ if hijackers found out
The game plan at the time was to buy time by denying fuel, and to wait for the NSG to arrive. Sarabjit learned that the plane only had less than 10 minutes of fuel left, and was shocked when Devi Sharan took off after waiting for 45 minutes. He flew the plane to Lahore, where they were given the fuel necessary to fly to Dubai, and then to Kandahar. He said, “I would give full marks to Devi Sharan for courage and coolness. He pretended to be scared, but I could see that the man was in full control of what he was trying to do… I could never have imagined that a chap with 9 minutes of fuel would’ve taken off. I was working on the concept no-fuel-no-takeoff… No pilot with a sensible mind would take off like this…” Responding to accusations that he didn’t show the ‘presence of mind’ to keep the aircraft on the ground, Sarabjit said, “I had warned the people in Delhi that I have people waiting on the ground, but if we take action, there would be shooting, and people will die. As per our protocol, the central CMG handles hijacks, and they told me, ‘Don’t shoot’. I told Shyamal, ‘If you’re ready, I’ll start’, but he said, ‘Don’t. Disable the plane, but don’t move in with your chaps’. I told him, ‘Goli chalegi toh log marenge‘, and he said, ‘Goli mat chalao’.”
The standoff ended after a week, with the hijackers securing the release of three high-profile terrorists. IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack was released to positive reviews, but some criticism for its perceived misidentification of the hijackers.
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