'Most unprofessional, highly avoidable': Ex-Army General blasts Netflix's IC-814 series, rates it 2/10

Kanwal Jeet Singh Dhillon, former army commander, has given thumbs down to Netflix's 'IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack' web series, saying this is the most "unprofessional depiction" of a "very serious incident". Dhillon, who served as Commander of the 15 Corps, said he couldn't watch the web series beyond a few minutes. "Highly avoidable...my rating...2/10," he said in a tweet.

The web series is based on a true event when a Delhi-bound Indian passenger plane - IC 814 - was hijacked by five Muslims soon after the plane took off from Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport.    

The hijackers were Muslims but they used Hindu codenames like Chief, Doctor, Burger, Bhola, and Shankar. The web series makers went by their code names, which some felt was an attempt to rewrite history. 

BJP IT Cell chief Amit Malviya said the hijackers of IC-814 were dreaded terrorists, who used aliases to hide their Muslim identities, but Anubhav Sinha he said legitimised their criminal intent by furthering their non-Muslim names. 

Kanchan Gupta, who was an OSD in the PMO when the hijacking took place, said the codenames that were given to the hijackers have been intentionally used and their real names that have been in the public domain have not been referred to. "The purpose behind this is to communicate or suggest that they were not Muslims," he said in an interview with News9.

In an opinion piece in ThePrint, senior journalist Vir Sanghvi wrote that the IC 814 web series is an expensive 'PR job for the ISI', the spy agency of Pakistan. He said its account of what happened on the ground is "inaccurate, and often childish and silly". "It is also a lie. The deliberate evasions and inventions turn the whole show into an expensive PR job for the ISI.

The hijackers were Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Shakir, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim, Shahid Akhtar Sayed, and Ibrahim Athar. 

Days after the hijacking, the MHA put out a detailed summary of who the terrorists were and where they came from. The MHA also said that it was an ISI operation. "Pakistan’s complicity in this diabolic hijacking episode is borne out by the events that occurred in the course of the hijack episode itself," the MHA said. 

The MHA listed some clinching events that confirmed beyond doubt that it was an ISI operation. As per the details, a little while before the departure of IC-814 from Kathmandu, a Pakistan Embassy car (42 CD 14) arrived at the aircraft.

Among the three officials who dismounted from the car and proceeded to the departure lounge was one who is believed to have supplied a consignment of RDX to a group of Punjabi militants in Kathmandu some years back.

When the hijackers took control of the aircraft and announced that the place had been hijacked their first directive to the Pilot was: 'Proceed to Lahore'. "At the Indian pilot’s request, ATC Lahore declined to permit the Indian Airlines place to land but when on its way back from Amritsar, the chief Hijacker spoke to ATC, Lahore and urged him that the plane had to be refuelled, the ATC Lahore allowed it to land, and provided it fuel."

The MHA said that out of the 36 prisoners whose release was demanded by the hijackers as many as 33 were Pakistanis, one was a UK national of Pakistan origin, and one was an Afghan. Only one was a Kashmiri Indian. "Pakistan's interest in getting these prisoners released is evident."