‘My Father Was On Board’: How Jaishankar Handled 1984 Plane Hijack Case As A Young Officer

“Discovered My Father Was On Flight”: S Jaishankar Recalls 1984 Hijack

New Delhi: As a young Indian Foreign Service officer, India’s current External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar faced a scary and, at the same time, challenging assignment way back in 1984.

Jaishankar, who is in Germany on the second leg of a three-nation European tour, revealed that his father was on a hijacked Indian Airlines plane 40 years ago, when he had a unique window on “both sides” — perspective of family members and those in the government.

Answering a question on the recently-released web series ‘IC-814: The Kandahar Hijack’ during a community event in Geneva, Jaishankar told the audience how he dealt with the situation as part of the team dealing with the hijack situation on the one hand and being part of group of affected families putting pressure on the government on the other, reported PTI.

“In 1984 there was a hijacking. I was a very young officer. I was part of the team which was dealing with it. I rang up my mother, actually, to tell her, ‘Look, I can’t come. There’s a hijacking,” he said, elaborating it was his turn to go home and feed his young son as his wife too was working.

“And then I discovered my father was on the flight. The flight ended up in Dubai. It’s a long story, but fortunately, nobody got killed. It could have ended as a problem,” the Minister added.

It was on July 5, 1984 that an Indian Airlines flight was hijacked from Pathankot and flown to Dubai. After over 36 hours, 12 pro-Khalistani hijackers surrendered to the authorities and released all 68 passengers and six crew members unharmed.

His father K Subrahmanyam, an IAS officer and regular commentator on strategic issues, was among the passengers.

“So often these are situations… and movie guys don’t make the governments look good. The hero is supposed to look good. Then nobody would watch the movie and you got to accept that,” he quipped, evoking peals of laughter from the audience.

Jaishankar did provide the disclaimer that he had not watched the Netflix series on the 1999 hijack in which the Indian Airlines flight was taken to Amritsar, Dubai and then Kandahar.