IC-814 hijack: S R Sinho backs former RAW chief's revelations

Dulat claimed that the Crisis Management Group had not handled the incident properly

Don't want to miss the best from Business Standard?

Defence expert Major General (retd) S R Sinho on Friday backed former Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) chief A S Dulat's statement that the Crisis Management Group (CMG) had not handled the IC-814 hijack incident properly and said that nobody wanted to take the responsibility at that time.

"In 1999, flight IC-814 was hijacked and first it landed in Amritsar for refuelling then it flew to Dubai and from there to Kandahar. This case was again goofed up totally by the various top agencies. Nobody wanted to take responsibility," Sinho told ANI.

"Similarly, people at Delhi did not want to take responsibility and they set a guideline that no causalities should take place. This is a very funny instruction which was issued by authorities at Delhi. How can causalities not take place? When the commando raid has to be carried out to get the passengers released, obviously there would have been causalities," he added.

He further said that the nation had to face humiliation by letting the flight IC-814 leave the country from Amritsar.

"Nobody took responsibility, nobody acted. In fact Mishra, who was the advisor to the prime minister that time, he also did not put across this thing....This flight after a delay landed in Dubai and then pushed off to Kandahar. We had a very black face, in fact faced humiliation.... This was a total goof up," he said.

Dulat had earlier told a leading English newspaper in an interview that the Crisis Management Group (CMG) had 'goofed up' the operation during the handling of IC-814 hijacking. He stated that the hijackers gained an upper hand once the plane flew out of India.

In 1999, IC-814, which was en route from Kathmandu to New Delhi, was hijacked by terrorist group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan.

The crisis lasted for seven days and ended after India agreed to release three militants - Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Maulana Masood Azhar.