IC 814 hijack survivor: 'Terrorists tried to convert passengers to Islam, collected charity'

As the controversy over Netflix's IC 814 web series rages on, a hijack survivor has revealed that one of the terrorists, who used a code name 'Doctor', gave a lot of speeches and tried to convert the passengers to Islam. 

These speeches were delivered by Shakir, who slit the throat of Rupin Katyal, the only passenger who was killed in the entire hostage crisis. Shakir asked his hostages to convert to Islam, saying, "It was better than Hinduism".

Pooja Kataria, one of the hijack survivors, revealed that Shakir tried to proselytise the trapped passengers onboard IC 814 and then standing at Kandahar. Pooja and her husband, Rakesh, were among the 26 couples who were on that ill-fated plane returning to Delhi from Nepal.

In an exclusive conversation with India Today TV, Chandigarh-based Pooja Kataria recalled the incident, saying Shakir, who used the code name 'Doctor', seemed to be "very educated". "You could tell just by his speech. He gave us three to four speeches about converting to Islam, saying Islam is a very good religion, better than Hinduism," Pooja told India Today TV. "We almost got convinced".

Another passenger on flight IC 814 confirmed to India Today Digital about the speeches by Shakir, urging the hostages to convert to Islam. The passenger said that one of the speeches was rather long.

The Delhi-bound Indian Airlines Flight IC 814, with 179 passengers onboard, was hijacked by 5 Muslims soon after it took off from Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport on December 24, 1999. After days of intense negotiations, the hostages were released on December 31, 1999.

Netflix's web series based on this true event has faced backlash for what many say whitewashing ISI's role in the entire incident and using only Hindu codenames of Muslim terrorists.  

Not just that, the hijackers also asked for charity from the trapped passengers, claiming that "poor Afghanistan" needed their financial help, Kataria said, adding that the passengers collected money and handed over Rs 85,000 to help the war-torn nation.

"They [hijackers] insisted that Afghanistan was very poor, and we should do charity for them. So, we collected 85,000 from all the passengers and gave it to them for Afghanistan," Kataria told Kamaljeet Sandhu of India Today TV.

(With inputs from Kamaljeet Sandhu)