Congress and National Conference have targeted the Vajpayee government for submitting to Pak terrorists at Kandahar. The truth is more complicated. The hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 from Nepal to Kandahar on December 24, 1999 and subsequent release of three terrorists in exchange for hostages to date remains shrouded in mystery and deep state conspiracies. The hijacking accompanied with conspiracies and terror politics have recently been revived by an eponymous fictional drama aired on an OTT platform with then Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) chief Amarjit Singh Dulat and his then RAW colleague Anand Arni, who was also part of the Indian negotiating team, adding fuel to fire by giving their version of the transpired events to the media.
Dulat says that Ajit Doval, then lead negotiator and now National Security Advisor, was sending frantic messages from Kandahar to resolve the issue fast and basically give in to demands of the flight hijackers. Arni says that the hijackers, led by now Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar Alvi’s elder brother Athar Ibrahim Alvi and coordinated by his younger brother Rauf Asghar Alvi, had demanded the release of 105 terrorists in turn of hostages and the negotiation team had pared this demand to only to release of Masood Azhar on December 29 and then upped it back to release of three terrorists on December 30, 1999. Arni said that the negotiating team talked to released terrorists before they and the hijackers were taken away.
For the record, the IC-814 hijacking was handled by then National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra with intelligence inputs from RAW Chief Dulat and IB Chief Shyamal Dutta in New Delhi under guidance from then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and then Home Minister L K Advani. The Cabinet Secretary at that time was Prabhat Kumar and the CEO of Indian Airlines was Anil Baijal. The negotiating team send to Kandahar was led by then IB’s Additional Director Ajit Doval, who then and even now has a hardline on Pak terrorists and their front Hurriyat as compared to Dulat, Joint Secretary (Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran) Vivek Katju, Joint Director (operations) Nehchal Sandhu, RAW was represented by C D Sahay and Anand Arni. Doval and Sandhu, who later went on to head IB, had worked together all through the Punjab and Kashmir terrorism since the 1980s and are largely regarded as finest counter-terror operatives of IB by their peers. Given that Doval is now the NSA and Sandhu does not talk to the media at all, the Modi government should think in terms of declassifying the record on IC-814 hijacking with both Dulat, who has no love lost for Doval since Kashmir days, and Arni giving their version of events.
Since I reported the IC-814 hijacking for the Hindustan Times and have closely following terrorism emanating from Pakistan for the past 25 years, it is important to lay out facts as I know it after my off the record conversations with the then NSA Brajesh Mishra post-Vajpayee government being voted out of power in 2004.
