A statement from the Home Ministry in 2000 noted that the hijackers referred to each other as Chief, Doctor, Burger, Bhola, and Shankar.
The web series IC 814 – The Kandahar Hijack, created by Anubhav Sinha and Trishant Srivastava, is available for streaming on Netflix.
New Delhi: The head of content for Netflix India has been summoned by the government following the controversy surrounding the web series ‘IC 814 – The Kandahar Hijack,’ which depicts the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight by the Pakistan-based terror group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, according to sources.
The Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s summons to Netflix India chief Monika Shergill comes after widespread criticism on social media accusing the series’ creators of intentionally altering the hijackers’ names to “Bhola” and “Shankar.” The web series, created by Anubhav Sinha and Trishant Srivastava, is based on the book ‘Flight Into Fear: The Captain’s Story’ by Devi Sharan, the captain of the hijacked flight, and journalist Srinjoy Chowdhury. It features prominent actors such as Naseeruddin Shah, Vijay Varma, and Pankaj Kapur.
The series dramatizes the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814 on December 24, 1999. The flight, carrying 191 passengers, took off from Kathmandu, Nepal, and was en route to Delhi when five hijackers, posing as passengers, seized control of the plane. The aircraft made multiple landings in Amritsar, Lahore, and Dubai before finally being taken to Kandahar, Afghanistan.
In a desperate bid to secure the release of the hostages, the then-government, led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, agreed to release three notorious terrorists—Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar—from Indian prisons. Reports suggest that the Taliban facilitated the hijackers and released terrorists in reaching Pakistan.
A Union Home Ministry statement from January 6, 2000, identified the hijackers as Ibrahim Athar, Shahid Akhtar Sayed, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim, and Shakir.
The statement further noted that the hijackers referred to each other by the names Chief, Doctor, Burger, Bhola, and Shankar—names by which they were known to the passengers on the hijacked plane.
Several journalists who covered the week-long hijacking in 1999 have echoed this detail on social media, stating that passengers had indeed reported the hijackers using these names.
Earlier, BJP leader Amit Malviya criticized the series’ creators for using these names, claiming that the hijackers, who were known terrorists, used aliases to conceal their Muslim identities. He accused filmmaker Anubhav Sinha of legitimizing this act by perpetuating their non-Muslim names in the series, suggesting that future generations might wrongly believe that Hindus were behind the hijacking. Malviya further asserted that this is part of a broader left-wing agenda to whitewash the crimes of Pakistani terrorists, all of whom were Muslims.
