by Anil Jaggia
“That’s good,” said Captain Sharan.
“Boss,” piped in Rajinder, “all Hyderabad people are nice.”
“Are you referring to yourself?” laughed the Captain. We all joined in the laughter, while Sharma opened the door to step out with the tray. It was the last time we would laugh in 1999.
Before Sharma could close the door, an intruder pushed him aside and forced his way into the cockpit. In the instant we caught a glimpse of him, we knew we were in trouble, for his face was masked under a red balaclava. Even his eyes behind the slit in the monkey-cap were hidden behind photochromatic lenses.
“Shit,” protested Captain Sharan, “what is this?”
“Kya hua? (What happened?) Who are you?” I exclaimed.
Of course, it was immediately clear who he was, for he held a grenade in his left hand, a revolver in his right. He was about 5’ 2” or 5’ 3” tall, of small build but with a little paunch, and was wearing a suit. The cockpit is strictly off-limits to passengers, but you don’t argue with a grenade or revolver.
A frisson of alarm ran down our spines. We were being hijacked.
The intruder barked: “Koi hoshiyari nahin karega. Koi hilega nahin. Tayyara hamare kabaze main hain. (Nobody move or try to act smart, we have seized the aircraft.)”
We froze. The hair on my arm prickled with fear.
It took us a few seconds to adjust to the new situation. We looked at each other in dismay and, as though by unspoken mutual consent, decided to stay calm and rational, and not panic or do anything rash. I asked the armed trespasser to sit down and tell us what he wanted. The hijacker snapped back: “Aap kuch nahin karenge. Baat nahin karenge. Aap sirf maghrab me chaliye. (Don’t do anything. Don’t say anything. Just fly this plane towards the west.)”
This is a situation every crew member dreads. An aircraft hijacker is usually highly charged and motivated either by some religious vow or by the need for revenge. The best I could do, therefore, was to try and calm him. As I tried to speak, the hijacker shouted again: “Nobody will speak. Just fly the plane.”
From his tone, it was clear that we had no option but to follow his orders. Brandishing his revolver, the hijacker asked: “Where are your air guards sitting?”
“We do not have any security personnel on board,” Captain Sharan turned back to reply.
“Don’t look back,” the hijacker shouted at him. “Fly the aircraft west, west, west.”
“We have no air guards,” Rajinder also added.
At this, the hijacker thrust the revolver towards me and cried, “Call your air guards now.”
Unconvinced when we clarified that there were none aboard the aircraft, he shouted, “I will have all the passengers searched. If I find any air guards, I shall not leave any of you alive.”
“We have no such thing as air guards,” Rajinder said, “we are a commercial airline, we Only carry passengers.”
“You call yourself a commercial airline,” hissed the hijacker, “yet you carry forces all the time.”
I requested him to sit down in the observer’s seat just behind the captain’s but he seemed determined to stand. He seemed to fear being vulnerable while seated. His accent was similar to that of Pakistani taxi drivers in Sharjah.
Within minutes of the hijacker taking control, another hijacker in a black balaclava (later identified as Burger) entered the cockpit, saluted smartly, whispered something in Red Cap’s ears and left. At this, Red Cap, who obviously seemed to be the chief, now repeated for our benefit: “The aircraft is under our control. Aap kisee kism ki hoshiyari nahi karen. (Do not try to act smart in any way.) Just fly west.”
Captain Sharan did exactly that.
Back in the cabin, airhostess Sabita Khalko of station 2L and Kobita Mukherji of station 2R had gone to collect beer from the rear galley. Airhostess Rajani Chandrasekhar of station 4L and flight purser M.A. Sateesh of station 3R were already at the back, while airhostess Tara Debanath of station 1R was in mid-galley preparing coffee and tea. Along with Sapna Menon and Kalpana Majumdar, the flight crew had finished the liquor service and were serving the meal casseroles when the passengers learnt of the hijacking.
The chief hijacker, brandishing his revolver, wanted to address the passengers in the cabin but, unfortunately, the public address system temporarily failed us. At this, he started shouting. By then, the hijackers had moved the 19 executive class passengers to the empty seats in the economy cabin. The shocked cabin crew was ordered to return to their seats. Soon after, the cabin crew were told to blindfold the men with the headrest covers of the seats. They were then asked, with the help of some passengers, to take down the hand baggage from the overhead bins and place it on the seats of the executive class. The women were separated from their families, and asked to cover their heads. Flight purser Anil Sharma who had been the first person they had run into, was told: “We have no enmity with you. But don’t try anything smart, otherwise we will have no hesitation in blowing up the aircraft and killing all of you.”
Unseen by the hijackers, Captain Sharan had quietly selected the relevant transponder frequency and passed on a coded message to Ground Control. In a matter of seconds, all civil aviation authorities in India would know that flight IC 814 had been hijacked.
* * *
In the economy cabin
For Subhash Kumar and Daman Kumar Soni, part of a group of hardware dealers who had been to Kathmandu as an incentive award, the holiday was to end more dramatically than they could ever have imagined. The first hint of trouble came by way of the sound of some commotion in the cabin. Both dismissed it as probably a scuffle between some passengers. It was followed by the sound of pounding feet. From his seat in the twelfth row, Subhash Kumar realised the extent of their trouble when he heard a food trolley being kicked, and the clatter of falling glassware and food trays. One seat behind him, Soni realised an airhostess had been struck, probably by the trolley.
Two men came running down the aisle. “They kept shouting ‘Heads down, heads down’,” Subhash Kumar remembers with a shudder. Most passengers did not have time to react in their consternation, and so the hijackers began slapping them across their faces. Within moments, the cabin had been subdued.
Soni was halfway through his lunch when he saw people waving revolvers and grenades and telling everyone to throw their food down below their seats and put their faces down. “I couldn’t believe that a hijack was happening—these things happen to other people or perhaps in the movies. I thought it was probably someone fooling around—koi drama kar raha hai.”
Three of the hijackers had been sitting in the economy section, and two in the executive class. One of them came within a few feet of Soni. “This was the only time we saw them without their monkey caps.” For the rest of their days, the hijackers of IC 814 would remain masked.
One of the hijackers whom the passengers came to recognise as Bhola, now became angry. He wanted to speak to the passengers but the hand-held megaphone used by the flight crew in the case of an emergency, was not working. In disgust, he hurled it to the floor and shouted: “Doosra mike do, jaldi. (Quick, give me another mike.)” Flight purser Anil Sharma produced another megaphone and was sent to the seventh row to sit.
When the Captain announced the takeover of the aircraft by hijackers over the public address system, the enormity of the situation finally struck home. All the passengers, one hour’s flying distance from home, were hostages to a desperate group of people.
* * *
In the airspace above Lucknow
As the hijacked IC 814 flew on its undefined course, a VVIP Boeing aircraft was flying just four minutes ahead. Inside the aircraft was Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee returning after addressing a public meeting in Bihar. With him was Union Civil Aviation Minister Sharad Yadav. Together, they were discussing the impact of the rally on the impending elections in Bihar. From the mood of the premier, it appeared that the rally had been a huge success. Little did they know that in the air, a big crisi
s was already brewing.
Flight IC 814 was in close vicinity of the Prime Minister’s aircraft. Yet, the country’s most powerful person remained ignorant of the crisis. It was only after he would land at Palam Technical Area in Delhi that he would be informed of the hijacking. It is intriguing why the pilot of the Boeing chose to remain quiet and did not pass on the message of the hijacking to the PM’s entourage. He was certainly privy to the information.
Vajpayee’s courtiers in New Delhi were eagerly waiting the Prime Minister’s arrival. December 25 was his birthday and they had planned an elaborate party for their leader the following day. They had no inkling that the day of his seventy-fifth birthday would foment a national and emotional crisis that would take its toll on the country’s polity and international relations.
There is, in fact, an elaborate system laid down under the Contingency Plan framed by the Ministry of Civil Aviation for dealing with exigencies such as a hijack. Unfortunately, from the very beginning, the system began to trip as the plan was ignored. The set-up for managing the crisis was delayed. Prime Minister Vajpayee was not informed of the hijack while he was airborne despite the availability of an Iridium phone in the aircraft. Surprisingly, the joint Intelligence Committee comprising the Intelligence chiefs and National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra failed to inform the Prime Minister. On the ground, if anything, the situation seemed even worse.
Sharan’s coded message to Lucknow ATC, which was passed on to the primary Air Traffic Control room at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, alerted the Director General of Civil Aviation, H.S. Khola. Civil Aviation Secretary Ravindra Gupta was the first major official to be informed of the news, and he immediately contacted others in the administration. The government machinery began to swing into action.
Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar and Brajesh Mishra were sitting together in South Block when they were informed of the hijacking. Kumar initiated the drill that activates the Crisis Management Group (CMG). As India’s top bureaucrat, he is responsible for convening the CMG and chairing its meetings. Home Secretary Kamal Pande was informed, as was National Security Guards (NSG) chief Nikhil Kumar, RAW chief A.S. Dulat, Foreign Secretary Lalit Mansingh, and Intelligence Bureau chief Shyamal Dutta. At 6.00 p.m. a meeting was hastily conivened at the Control Room at Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan.
* * *
On board IC 814
“Have you pressed the hijack button?” the hijacker asked urgently.
“What button?” asked Captain Sharan. “We don’t have any hijack button.”
“Why are you telling lies?” shouted the hijacker.
“We don’t have any such button,” Captain Sharan tried to reason with him. “This is an old aircraft.”
“You seem destined to die at my hands,” the hijacker pronounced ominously.
Captain Sharan seemed as exasperated as Rajinder and I. He said: “Look, we must know where we are headed. You are in total control, so you can at least tell us where to go.”
The hijacker replied: “Captain saheb, fly the aircraft at leisure. We are in no hurry. This is the millennium flight. We shall go around the world and on millennium day, we shall give a gift to the government of India.”
At this, I confirmed that we were in fact headed west. It was as though he was not listening to us. His weapons poised dangerously, he began to repeat: “Don’t look back. Maghrab ko chaliye, maghrab ko chaliye. (Go west.)”
A little later, Red Cap said he wanted the aircraft to go on a non-stop, five-hour flight. I said that this was not possible since we had taken only a limited amount of fuel from Kathmandu airport.
But the hijacker wasn’t listening. He spoke angrily: “No, this is an international flight; it has all the fuel you need, and you must fly west for five hours. You must carry on.”
We argued back and forth like this for some time. I tried to explain: “As Kathmandu is at an elevation of 4,400 feet, the Airbus does not carry full tanks if it has to carry passengers.” This was because airlines have to strike a balance between payload and fuel. I also asked if the crew could inform Ground Control.
“No, you may not,” he shouted, and then asked, “Now, tell me, have you pressed that button? Have you pressed that button? Answer me.”
I told him we had no idea what he was talking about, that there was no button for communicating any sort of signal to Ground Control since this was a very old, outdated aircraft. However, he insisted: “Aap ke paas button hai aur aapne woh daba diya hai. (You have some sort of button and you have triggered an alarm.)”
I continued to insist that we had to inform Ground Control on the radio or else the aircraft would not get clearance to go anywhere.
“No, you will not speak to anyone,” he said.
Through all our exchanges, I couldn’t help but notice that Red Cap seemed to know the aircraft rather well—almost as if he had been in it before. One of the first things he had demanded to know was about the air guards. Now he wanted to know how to get to the ‘room’ down below. Apparently he meant the avionics bay. Brandishing both grenade and gun, he said: “You’ll answer all my questions correctly and truthfully or—I have this gun and this grenade. I have pulled the pin and if I release the grenade, everything will be destroyed.”
I pointed to the panel on the floor.
“Theek hai (Okay),” he said. “Now you can tell Ground Control that you are going towards the west. Don’t say you’ve been hijacked.”
I said to him: “Son, we can’t do that. We have to tell Ground Control that we have been hijacked. This is standard procedure. Look, they can’t do anything about it. We can go west as you want, but we have to communicate the change of course to them. Also, can you tell us why we are heading in that direction?”
None of this had any effect on the hijacker. He kept repeating that he wanted to go west, but would not disclose the destination. He insisted that he wanted five hours of flying time. At this point, I said that wherever it was that we had to go, we had to have a destination in mind, and that destination had to be conveyed to Ground Control. And the inflight computer had to be operated accordingly.
When he asked us where we could go with the amount of fuel left, Sharan told him: “Delhi and, at most, Amritsar. We can go back to Lucknow too for refuelling.”
“No, Lucknow to ulta hua. (Lucknow is in the opposite direction.) You have to go ahead,” he said.
He then asked Sharan to head for Lahore. I tried to convince the hijacker that Lahore was out of the question because of the fuel factor. But he insisted that it had to be Lahore and nowhere else. “Aap bahas nahin karenge. (Don’t argue with me.)”
I reiterated that we had to inform Ground Control to place the aircraft on the air traffic pattern if we were to avoid an accident.
“That will be good,” cut in the hijacker sarcastically.
“Then who in the world will know that this flight has been hijacked,” I attempted to placate him. “Everyone will say two aircraft hit each other, and all your efforts will go waste.”
The reasoning seemed to appeal to him, tor just us abruptly he gave us the green signal: “Okay, aap bata deejiye. (You inform them.)”
The message was relayed: “IC 814 is being hijacked.”
Varanasi ATC came on the line immediately. “Request endurance on board.”
“Have endurance three hours,” 814 responded.
“Understand destination Delhi,” ATC Varanasi checked.
“Destination Delhi,” 814 confirmed. “Asking for Lahore.”
On another frequency, we got through to Lucknow ATC: “We have been hijacked. They have everything on board—pistol, bomb, everything.” Lucknow advised us to contact Delhi on another frequency. “We have been hijacked,” we informed Delhi.
Delhi wanted our position.
“We are 17-18 miles (29 km) out of Lucknow.”
Delhi wanted to know where we were heading.
“They want us to go to Lahore only.”
“Request pe
rsons on board and endurance, Sir.”
“We have two hours endurance, two hours and 20 minutes endurance. And we have total on board 189 including all crew.”
We then requested Lahore weather conditions, and these were fed into the system.
“They are telling us to head for Lahore. Can you take permission from Lahore to land?” we asked Delhi.
“We are coordinating,” the radio crackled
We were not to know that by this time, a special cell had been created especially to deal with the hijacking of IC 814. All stations had been alerted and emergency services initiated.
Our immediate concern was to get clearance for entering Pakistan airspace without which no aircraft could operate there. The hijacker, who was suspicious of what he presumed to be a delay in response from Ground Control, asked for the radio speakers to be switched on. I used the time to start a dialogue with the hijacker. This was important as otherwise, in the criss-cross of conversation between the crew and Ground Control, a hijacker may feel isolated, neglected, and therefore get suspicious. Having a hijacker on board is bad enough, but having a suspicious hijacker is courting disaster. He might begin to think that his instructions were not being obeyed. He could become worried and take steps that could be detrimental to the safety of the flight.
Our tactics paid off. The hijacker opened up a little and said: “I want one thing from you people—cooperation. Tell the cabin crew to obey our orders.”
Sharan called for flight purser Anil Sharma and told him that he and the other cabin crew were to do whatever the hijackers wanted. The Captain then used the PA system to announce to the passengers that the aircraft was under the control of hijackers, and asked them to cooperate with the hijackers.
* * *
New Delhi
Under the Contingency Plan revised in 1995, the Crisis Management Group (CMG) in Delhi assisted by a central committee that functions from the ATC building at Indira Gandhi International Airport, takes charge in the event of a hijacking. It is headed by Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar. The central committee is headed by the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) H.S. Khola and comprises members from the Airports Authority of India, Bureau of Civil Aviation Safety, the concerned airline, senior intelligence and security officials and aviation experts. It also includes a few pilots. At all airports where there is a possibility of the aircraft landing, the local Aerodrome Committee is activated. The CMG crack team comprising top bureaucrats and Intelligence chiefs is required to meet within half an hour of any crisis. But it only met at 6.00 p. m.—almost one and a half hours after Sharan’s secret signal had been transmitted to Ground Control.
