Goof up on Kandahar hijack of IC-814 – details emerge after 16 years!!

RAW ex-chief, the man who had monitored the crisis of the 1999 hijack of IC-814 in Kandahar, has admitted now that it was an example in goof-up by the Crisis Management Group (CMG). One life was lost in the crisis and five terrorists were released instead on one.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 3 July 2015.

There was a five-hour CMG meeting on December 24 while the plane was parked in Amritsar. Without revealing much information, the ex-chief has said that "no one in Delhi or Punjab wanted to bell the cat". And, as they dilly-dallied, the plane flew away, and India lost the chance to gain an upper hand over the hijackers.
Subsequently, it became a blame game – with everyone shifting the blame to the other.
At the time the Punjab Police had wanted to storm the aircraft with is specially trained commandos – but, the permission was not granted by New Delhi.
Later, on the hostage trade-off when the daughter of the then Union home minister and current J&K CM Mufti Mohammed Sayeed was kidnapped, it became a classic case on how not to handle a hostage crisis.
It was a high-profile kidnap and celebrities hogged the limelight and were busy scoring points. Finally, instead of releasing one militant - Hamid Sheikh - which was all the JKLF wanted, India released five, and became a laughing stock.
(Image courtesy wikmediacommons.org)

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