RAW ex-chief AS Dulat, then DGP Sarabjeet Singh recalls incident: ‘Then CM Badal wanted no bloodshed after hijacked IC-814 landed in Amritsar’

IC-814 was hijacked by five terrorists on December 24, 1999, 40 minutes after it took off from Kathmandu. The aircraft carrying about 180 passengers remained hostage for seven days and flew from Kathmandu to Amritsar and then to Lahore.

Speaking at a seminar on the 25th anniversary of Kargil War at India International Centre (IIC) in New Delhi Thursday evening, former chief of Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), AS Dulat spoke about the incident in context of the intelligence failures, which have taken place leading to various incidents.

Dulat opined that the Crises Management Group (CMG) under the Cabinet Secretary failed to decide anything on the course of action with regard to IC-814.

“You remember IC 814? I was in the heart of that CMG. Nothing happened there. Many times I am questioned by film producers, directors etc that tell us what happened. I said how can I tell you what happened. But I can tell you nothing happened,” said Dulat.

He went on to say that in the vital first three or four hours after that plane landed in Amritsar, the CMG kept debating. “The Home Minister came, Principal Secretary, NSA came… nobody decided anything……and then we blamed DGP Punjab. He happened to be a batchmate of mine and I spoke to Sarabjit later on. He said he had the Commandos there but he was not going to risk his career or life. He was waiting for Delhi to give him orders. He said ‘my Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had told me I don’t want bloodshed in Amritsar. Let it pass if it has to pass’. But Delhi took no decision and after the plane took off from Amritsar everybody blamed everybody,” said Dulat.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Sarabjeet Singh, said that Dulat had recalled the incident correctly but added that the former CM Badal had not said that the aircraft should be allowed to go away.

“After the news of the hijack was received, I had anticipated that it may land at Amritsar. There was no alert or information of that sort but I had a hunch. And therefore I stationed two companies of Commandos at the Amritsar airport,” recalled the former DGP.

He added that his DIG Range had been in touch with the Captain of the aircraft from the ATC tower in Amritsar and that the Captain had been asking him to ‘do something’.

Sarabjit Singh said that the CMG asked him not to do anything if it caused any harm to the passengers. “We did not have ladders and other such equipment to storm the aircraft and I was informed that the NSG would take 45 minutes to reach and a further two-three hours to prepare for any action,” he recalled.

Ultimately, with nothing happening the pilots of the aircraft took off even as the aircraft was parked in the middle of the runway.

“He barely managed to clear the runway because he had begun the take off roll from the middle. The rest is known to all,” he said.

The aircraft, with 191 passengers, including 15 crew, on board, proceeded from Amritsar to Lahore in Pakistan on December 24 where it was refuelled and later flew to Dubai and then thereon to Kandahar in Afghanistan. One passenger, Rupin Katyal, was murdered by the hijackers in Dubai.

Following protracted negotiations, all passengers and crew were released on December 1984 in exchange for three hardcore terrorists in Indian prisons. The three — Maulana Masood Azhar, chief of Jaish-e-Mohammad, Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar — were taken to Kandahar in an Indian aircraft and set free.

In the seminar, Dulat defended the intelligence agencies of India. “If there were no intelligence failures nothing would go wrong in the world. Pearl harbour, 9/11 etc. There is no such thing as foolproof security or intelligence in the world. Just as we have best military in world our intelligence services are as good as any in world,” he said.