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When the Indian Airlines flight IC814 was hijacked on December 24, 1999, the passengers were not prepared for what the next week of their life would look like. The terrorists took the plane from city to city and finally landed in Kandahar. One passenger named Rupin Katyal was killed by them on the first day of the hijack and his body was deplaned when the plane landed in Dubai. Rachna, his newly wed wife, who was just 21 at the time, was still on the plane and was kept under the false impression that Rupin was still alive. The newly weds’ story was an emotional one that left the country teary eyed. Now, Anubhav Sinha’s IC814: The Kandahar Hijack on Netflix, recaps those events and tries to show a fraction of the terror that she lived through in those days.
A year after the hijack, in January 2001, Rachna spoke to Rediff and said that she had no idea that her husband had passed away on the first day. The two had gotten married in Delhi just 20 days before they took the flight from Kathmandu and were returning from their honeymoon. As per the FIR report quoted by the publication, Rupin’s body had “one stab wound on the abdomen, four stab wounds on the chest, two stab wounds on the neck where the jugular vein was slit, six stab wounds on the face and one abrasion on the nose.”
Rachna recalled that when she came back from Kandahar, her father-in-law Chandar Mohan Katyal was there to pick her up but “he did not let his sorrow show.” Rachna wasn’t even told about Rupin’s death, she was just told that he was in the hospital. All this while, they kept her away from the gaze of the media. “I was told Rupen is no more only much later, after even the kriya ceremony had been performed. It was only when I repeatedly kept asking for Rupen and they could avoid it no longer that I was finally told the truth. I think I was becoming hysterical so my father-in-law finally pointed to a large photograph of Rupen and brokenly told me, ‘That is your Rupen. That is all that we have of him’,” she said.
After the incident, Rupen’s father was on a mission to support his daughter-in-law and thus encouraged her to get a job. Because she had never worked before, her requested Indian Airlines to give her a job at their Delhi office. While the airlines helped them, the government did not share their condolences and this hurt Rachna. “Nobody from the government, on behalf of the president, the prime minister or the external affairs ministry or the home ministry bothered to contact us or to represent the Indian government when Rupen’s last rites were being done,” she said.
In fact, when the then-President of the United States Bill Clinton visited India in May 2000, he met with Rupen’s family. “Mr Clinton personally offered his condolences and consoled us and asked us whether we required any sort of help.” Even after returning to the US, he sent them a letter from the White House assuring that their government would work with the Indian government to find the culprits.
Rachna slowly built her life back together and appreciated the independence that she got after she started working. In 2001, Rachna remarried and her father-in-law did her kanyadaan. “I gave my daughter Rachna away in marriage. Like any parent, we wanted to see our daughter settled in life.”
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