India lacked hard mind set against terrorists during Kandahar hijacking: Swamy

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy today said absence of a "hard mind set" against terrorism led the Indian government to 'compromise' during the 1999 Kandahar hijacking case by releasing three terrorists to secure the release of nearly 190 passengers.

He asserted that there should be zero tolerance against terrorists.

An Indian Airlines aircraft was hijacked from Kathmandu by terror group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen in December, 1999. The flight landed in Amritsar and was subsequently taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan.

"We compromised on the Kandahar aircraft hijack when we released three terrorists, who were arrested with great difficulty and put in jail. One of them was Azhar, who went on to create the Jaish-e-Muhammed, which is everyday killing our people in some form or the other," he said.

Jaish-e-Muhammed had gained notoriety for its alleged role in the 2001 Indian Parliament attack.

Swamy, who was speaking at an event organised by Global Counter Terrorism Council, noted that India released the three terrorists due to lack of a "hard mindset" and "zero-tolerance towards terrorism".

Incidentally, senior BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee was heading the then central government.

Swamy said one of the few times that India retailiated against a terror attack was launching the surgical strike on terror launchpads across the Line of Control in September, 2016 following a terror attack on an Army camp in Uri that killed 19 soldiers.

The BJP leader also claimed that 1993 Mumbai riots mastermind Dawood Ibrahim was behind several land deals in Mumbai and several politicians had been "compromised" due to this factor, resulting in no concrete action against the gangster.