Vijay Varma starrer IC184 The Kandahar Hijack is the re-telling of the infamous incident in India’s defence history. It has piqued the nation’s interest and the Indian officials involved in the negotiations are recalling the ordeal. In a recent chat with Vijay Varma, Captain Devi Sharan shared how the hijackers were using information that was being reported by the media.
Captain Devi Sharan said, “The hijackers were getting every information, they had a transistor type of radio where they were listening to the news. That time what was being told by the media, so much information shouldn’t have been given out. It caused us a lot of damage.”
He mentioned that when the plane landed in Amritsar for 45 minutes, he was lauded on the news for stopping the hijackers, which in turn angered them. “When I landed the plane in Amritsar, some people of importance (in the news) said that the Captain had done his job, and the hijackers couldn’t stop him. The hijackers took this the wrong way, they said that me landing the flight in Amritsar was an attempt to get them killed. They were getting to know all of this through the news so they would threaten me again and again, and it prevented me from doing my job,” he said and added that this also put the lives of the passengers at risk.
The series briefly touched upon this when a top-ranking official’s name was hidden from the passengers list lest the hijackers should have leverage over the negotiators. In a recent chat, the chief of the R&AW at the time, AS Dulat, spoke about the ‘ghost passenger’ whose identity was kept a secret.
In an interview with Barkha Dutt, Dulat revealed that this passenger was Shashi Bhushan Singh Tomar, then the R&AW station chief in Kathmandu. He was reportedly seated on 16C. Dulat said that Tomar had two brothers-in-law in high offices, one was NK Singh from the PMO and the other was the head of the NSG.
When asked if the high-profile man’s presence on the plane was why the commandos weren’t deployed in Amritsar, Dulat said, “NK Singh, we were both in the PMO, was certainly concerned. But that concern was only exhibited to me. He would ask me now and then, what was happening.” I understood why he was worried; it was his sister’s husband. But at that point in time, let me tell you, when the plane was in Amritsar, nobody in the government knew that there was an R&AW officer on board that flight. I knew, but nobody else did. I didn’t tell anybody. There was no need to tell anybody, there was no need to advertise it,” he said.
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