Netflix Content Head Summoned Over ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’ Row; Know The Controversy

New Delhi: The government on Monday summoned the content head of Netflix to Delhi following backlash over the streaming platform’s series “IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack.” The show, which dramatises the infamous 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814, has sparked controversy on social media for allegedly altering the names of two hijackers to Hindu names.

The content head of Netflix India has been summoned by the government amid the massive controversy surrounding ‘IC 814’, a web series on the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight by Pakistan-based terror outfit Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, sources have said.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting directed the Netflix India content chief Monika Shergill to appear before it on Tuesday, September 2, to offer an explanation on the allegedly contentious aspects of the web series, India Today reported.

The summons from the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry comes after hundreds of social media users accused the makers of the web series of deliberately changing the names of the hijackers to “Bhola” and “Shankar”. The hijackers in the series are depicted with the codenames Chief, Doctor, Burger, Bhola, and Shankar. The web series is directed by Anubhav Sinha and is inspired by the book ‘Flight Into Fear: The Captain’s Story’ by Devi Sharan, who was the captain of the flight and journalist Srinjoy Chowdhury.

Writer Neelesh Misra, who wrote the first book on the Kandahar hijacking, has reacted to the backlash over the ‘changed’ names of the terrorists in the series. “All the hijackers assumed false names. That is how they referred to each other and how the passengers referred to them throughout the hijacking — Regards, the author of the first book on the IC-814 hijacking,” Neelesh shared on X. Anubhav Sinha reposted the post.

The web series captured the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814 on December 24, 1999. The plane, with 191 fliers onboard, took off from Nepal’s Kathmandu and was headed for Delhi. Soon after take-off, five hijackers, who were posing as passengers, took control of the plane. It later made several landings, at Amritsar, Lahore and Dubai, before being taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan.

The government, then led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was forced to release three dreaded terrorists — Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar — from Indian prisons to secure the release of the hostages.

Neelesh also addressed questions about the hijackers playing antakshri with the captive passengers. “They played antakshari too with passengers?” a social media user asked. “Yes. It’s in my book. Based on countless interviews with passengers. An apple from which Burger took a bite was passed around the hungry passengers. Ripan Katyal brought to the business class and slashed to death, lying dead for days while his newly wedded bride sat in the economy class unaware. So many such terrifying and tragic moments. The IC 814 hijacking left so many questions on how it was dealt with. I haven’t seen the series,” he said.

Journalist Nidhi Razdan shared a statement issued by the Government of India in 2000, which states the code names used by the hijackers as depicted in the Netflix show.

It states: “The hijackers named by these operatives are:

• Ibrahim Athar, Bahawalpur
• Shahid Akhtar Sayed, Gulshan Iqbal, Karachi
• Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Defence Area, Karachi
• Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim, Akhtar Colony, Karachi
• Shakir, Sukkur city

To the passengers of the hijacked place these hijackers came to be known respectively as (1) Chief, (2) Doctor, (3) Burger, (4) Bhola and (5) Shankar, the names by which the hijackers invariably addressed one another.

IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack features a stellar starcast. These include Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Vijay Varma, Dia Mirza, Arvind Swamy and Dia Mirza.