IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack Is A Compact Thriller, But…

IC 814 Hijack – A Christmas Eve Nightmare

On Christmas Eve 1999, Indian Airlines flight IC 814 took off from Kathmandu in Nepal and was bound for New Delhi. There were 179  passengers and 11 crew members aboard the flight. Five men, belonging to the jihadist group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, drew their weapons mid-flight and hijacked the plane, resulting in one of the most infamous events in modern Indian history. The aircraft flew to Amritsar, Lahore, and Dubai, where 27 passengers were released, including a grievously injured Rupin Katyal, who was the only fatality of the event.

Eventually, the flight landed in Kandahar, where negotiations between representatives of the Indian government and the hijackers began. The hostage crisis came to an end on New Year’s Eve 1999 when the remaining passengers were released in exchange for three men who were imprisoned in India for terrorism – Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheik, Masood Azhar, and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar. These men later went on to be involved in multiple terrorist events such as the 2001 Indian Parliament attack, the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the 2016 Pathankot attack, and the 2019 Pulwama attack.

Anubhav Sinha’s A-Team

Director Anubhav Sinha – who debuted with the memorable Tum Bin, and then gave us a mixed bag of Ra.One , Mulk , Article 15 , Thappad , and Bheed – has piqued our interest with his latest Netflix series, IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack . The series has a stellar cast, including Vijay Verma, Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Arvind Swamy, Dia Mirza, Kumud Mishra, Manoj Pahwa, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Kanwaljit Singh, Aditya Shrivastava, Patralekha Paul, and Amrita Puri.

The mini-series is based on the book Flight into Fear , written by the pilot of the ill-fated aircraft, Captain Devi Sharan, and journalist Srinjoy Chowdhury . The series was co-created by Sinha and Trishant Srivastava .

An Effectively Used Ensemble Cast

This is a well-made series backed by powerful performances. Vijay Verma, as Captain Sharan Dev (based on Devi Sharan) gives a restrained and nuanced performance. For a large chunk of the series, he is restricted to his captain’s seat, head slightly tilted as a gun is pointed at his neck. Most of his costars are behind him, while he is looking straight ahead, into the green screen. Yet, his expressions convey his desperation, fear, and struggles to maintain his composure.

The biggest hurdle with an ensemble cast is giving adequate screen time to all lead characters, and Anubhav Sinha largely succeeds in doing so; each cast member gets at least two to three scenes in which they feature prominently. While most of the character arcs work, the characters played by Dia Mirza, Manoj Pahwa, and the hijackers (about that later) could have done better.

The question that Dia Mirza’s Shalini Chandra raises is a pertinent one: what is the role of the media? Is it just reporting the news as is, or do journalists owe it to the people to not only research and verify the news but also think about the ramifications of the news being “leaked”? While it raises questions like these, the series doesn’t quite go deeper and Shalini Chandra is left only reacting to situations for the most part.

Manoj Pahwa’s Mukul Mohan, Additional Director of the Intelligence Bureau (India’s internal security and counterintelligence agency), is meant to be a tough negotiator, but comes across as rather jokey. Pahwa nails his performance, but I found the character rather inconsistent.

Inaccuracies and Controversies

The series, unsurprisingly, became controversial right away, with people, including former intelligence officers, pointing out inaccuracies. Following the controversy, India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting summoned the content chief of Netflix India , Monika Shergill.

Some audiences have questioned, among other facts , the portrayal by the series of the role of Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),  in the hijacking. While the series eventually downplays the role of the ISI in the highjacking, A.S. Daulat, former chief of India’s external intelligence organization, Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), says ISI’s involvement was never in doubt .  The series also implies that there was al-Qaeda involvement in the hijacking, which former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan at the time, G Parthasarathy, has dismissed .

The hijackers: Inconsistent non-villains

I remember watching Ashutosh Rana as Lajjashankar Pandey in Sangharsh (1999), ululating on the screen. In less than five seconds, he scared every member of the audience and left an indelible mark on the psyche. That is a perfect demonstration of what a good villain can do.

In this series, however, the hijackers, who are ostensibly the villains in this tale, don’t evoke any fear in the audience. Their portrayal is inconsistent. In one scene, they are stabbing a person, and in another, one of them appears empathetic to an air hostess throwing up. While some of their actions, like the scene where they are playing antakshari with the hostages, are real , they stick out in the storytelling . It almost appears the makers couldn’t decide how they wanted to present the hijackers.

Their code names used in the series, ‘Burger’, ‘Doctor’, ‘Chief’, ‘Bhola’, and ‘Shankar’, as confirmed by a report from the Ministry of External Affairs ,  drew some flak for obscuring the actual identities of the hijackers.  Netflix has stated that it would add a new disclaimer to include the real and code names of the hijackers. The five hijackers were Ibrahim Athar, Shahid Akhtar Sayeed, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Zahoor Mistry, and Shakir.

A fine fictional series, but…

IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack is a tight thriller that is well-made and is worth a watch. However, can a series based on real events that are still fresh in the minds of many, be watched only as a work of fiction, ignoring the historical inaccuracies?

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