It was around 8:30 or 9 in the evening on the last day of 1999. I was in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, and was visiting a fellow Bihari friend, Tabish Khair – now an established novelist and poet – to celebrate the New Year festivities. While waiting for others to get ready, I switched on the TV to get an update on IC 814, an Indian Airlines plane hijacked eight days earlier with 155 passengers on board. The news was that the terrible saga had ended, and all passengers had been freed. But, of course, their freedom was secured in exchange for the release of three terrorists. 

Two of them released from jail were known in India – Maulana Masood Azhar (founder of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed) and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar (Al Umar Mujahideen). But except the police and intelligence agencies, only a few had heard of the third person: Omar Saeed Sheikh. Just two years later, Sheikh would become infamous worldwide for kidnapping and beheading a US journalist. He also nearly caused a diplomatic crisis between India and Pakistan following the November 26 terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008.

The Kidnapping Of 3 Westerners

The Netflix web series IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack has sparked a controversy over names and the portrayal of a few of the hijackers. But it has taken me back to my chance encounter with Sheikh. 

The year was 1994. My cameraman and I were out to cover a story for a Delhi-based TV channel; it was going through dry runs before the launch. We had barely reached Ghaziabad when we witnessed elaborate security arrangements outside a private hospital. The road was cordoned off. We were told that a terrorist was admitted to the hospital after being wounded in a police encounter in Saharanpur the previous night, during which a police inspector had been shot dead.

Security was tighter inside the hospital. But some smooth-talking with an amiable Uttar Pradesh ‘daroga ji‘ did the trick. He allowed us in on the condition that we would brief him on our conversation with the man inside, Omar Sheikh, whose English accent, he admitted, he did not understand. We rolled the camera as we entered the room, not knowing who Sheikh was and how big a catch he was for the police. The only piece of information we had was that the injured man had kidnapped three Britons and an American in Delhi and hid them in a house in Saharanpur on their way to Kashmir. He had told his captives that his name was Rohit Sharma, and that he was taking them to his quaint ancestral village in Kashmir. But when a Saharanpur police patrol party stumbled upon the captives, a shootout ensued. A police inspector was killed, and Sheikh got injured. All the captives though were freed.

Omar Sheikh, The London-Born, LSE-Educated Terrorist

The hospital was posh, Sheikh’s room big and clean. He lay in bed with a bandage around his right shoulder. The camera was rolling as we came face to face with a tall and bearded young man, propped up against hospital pillows, looking puzzled and befuddled. His first reaction was to shout a barrage of questions at us, “Who are you, why are you here, who has sent you?”. 

We asked for an interview, but he refused to speak to us in protest because he said he had no prior notice we were going to do an interview with him. He relented after I produced my press ID card. Before the interview began, he told us his name and that he was 20 years old. He was a student at the prestigious London School of Economics (LSE). He also said he was born in London and was raised both there and in Lahore. His Pakistani immigrant parents lived in London, where they ran a clothes business. 

During the half-hour interview, Sheikh Omar looked extremely worried. He told me he would give anything to return to life in Britain. He also kept pleading with me, “Brother, take me out of here, please.” During the interview, he revealed how at the age of 18, he had already done ‘jihad’ in Bosnia, fighting alongside and on behalf of Bosnian Muslims, who, he said, were being butchered by the Serbs. He was strikingly young and his accent was distinctly British. I thought he had the gift of the gab. I am not surprised he managed to lure foreign tourists and later, in 2002, used the same trick to lure American journalist Daniel Pearl into captivity.

Fooled by Extremists

He also recounted how he had been indoctrinated on the campus by an Islamist organisation that wanted to establish an Islamic society in Britain. He said he had been fooled by the hard-luck stories he had heard about the plight of Muslims and Kashmiris in India. 

Sheikh admitted that he was charged with kidnapping some foreign tourists to barter for Maulana Masood Azhar, who was then held in prison in India. He also admitted that he had been in Delhi for more than a month before the kidnapping and was struck by the religious freedom he saw. “I had been told that Muslims in India had no religious rights and Kashmiri Muslims were being subjected to torture and rape by the Hindu army,” he said.

I asked him, if released, would he go back and tell people in Britain that Indian Muslims were free to build mosques, say prayers, and work in government offices? He said he would. He appeared repentant, but clearly not enough.

Meeting Masood Azhar

Why Omar Sheikh chose the path of destruction was hard to say. He was exposed to Islamist extremism at a tender age. But that doesn’t fully explain the path he chose early in his life. He was privileged. He went to the private Forest School in London – the same school former cricketer Nasser Hussain studied in. But while Sheikh became a terrorist, Hussain went on to become the captain of the England cricket team. 

At LSE, Sheikh was known for his academic brilliance, especially in maths and economics. But he dropped out before completing his degree to join the ‘jihad’ in Bosnia. It is reported that he met a couple of Pakistani “fighters” there, who introduced him to Maulana Masood Azhar upon his return to Pakistan. He trained in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

After his release, it’s unclear where Sheikh went in Pakistan. According to some Pakistani papers, he lived in Lahore, where he married a local woman and had a child.

Until this time, Omar Sheikh was known mostly to Indian investigators and intelligence communities. His name cropped up at the time of his release in December 1999 from Tihar, but outside of India, he remained unknown. 

The Kidnapping Of Daniel Pearl

That changed after the kidnapping of American journalist Daniel Pearl. Suddenly, everyone wanted to know who Sheikh was. A foreign media outlet published my encounter with him, and I was inundated with requests for interviews by the Western media. 

Sheikh was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Pearl. He was given a death sentence, which was later turned into life imprisonment. According to a respected Pakistani journalist, who met a prison officer where Sheikh was lodged, Omar was shuttled regularly between Karachi and Hyderabad jails, spending a fortnight in each. The officer told the journalist that it was necessitated by the fact that he used his gift of the gab and often cast his spell on prison officials, who would then do him favours, like smuggling cellphones. 

When Sheikh Posed As Pranab Mukherjee

It is precisely this gift that once landed the authorities into hot water and led to a near diplomatic crisis between India and Pakistan. A year after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, Karachi’s Dawn newspaper ran an investigative story claiming that Sheikh had called the Pakistani President at the time, Asif Zardari, claiming to be India’s then-foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee. It was reported that he used unparliamentary language on the call and threatened Zardari with dire consequences for the Mumbai attacks. The English daily claimed, “Omar Saeed Sheikh, a detained Pakistani militant, had made hoax calls to President Asif Ali Zardari and the Chief of Army Staff, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in a bid to heighten Pakistan-India tensions after last year’s terrorist attacks on Mumbai, investigators have told Dawn.”

A diplomatic crisis was averted after the call was traced to his cell in Hyderabad jail. The cell was raided, and it was found that Sheikh used a British SIM card to make the threatening calls.

Despite Daniel Pearl’s wife, Mariane Pearl, writing a book, titled A Mighty Heart, and despite the book being made into a Hollywood film with the same title, the story of Omar Sheikh remains shrouded in mystery. In dozens of court appearances, he often appeared affable and charming, but not a lot of his terror connections have been confirmed.

Omar Sheikh Is Still A Mystery

Former dictator Pervez Musharraf called him a British spy in his autobiography. Omar himself boasted of his deep links to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in his off-the-cuff remarks to journalists during court hearings. He was known to have good relations with Jaish-e-Mohammed’s Maulana Masood Azhar and Lashkar-e-Toiba’s Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi. Some journalists, who investigated the roles terror outfits played in the  9/11 attacks, claimed he was an operative of Al-Qaeda.

Omar is being held in jail despite his release order by the Supreme Court in Pakistan. It is believed the country has kept him in prison after re-arresting him because of international pressure. But some also claim that he is better off in jail, lest he reveal too much.

(Syed Zubair Ahmed is a London-based senior Indian journalist with three decades of experience with the Western media)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

New Delhi:

Netflix’s latest web series, ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’, has sparked a controversy. The show, which is based on the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight by terrorists, has been accused of distorting facts, whitewashing terrorism, and offending public sentiment. The uproar has led to the Indian government summoning the content head of Netflix India.

The Incident: Hijacking of IC 814

Indian Airlines Flight IC 814 was hijacked on December 24, 1999. The plane, carrying 154 passengers and crew, was hijacked by five terrorists 40 minutes after it took off from Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, bound for Delhi. The hijackers, identified as members of the Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), diverted the plane to Kandahar in Afghanistan, then under the control of the Taliban.

The crisis lasted for eight days, during which the terrorists demanded the release of three high-profile militants: Maulana Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar. The Indian government, under immense pressure to save the lives of the hostages, ultimately agreed to release the militants. Then-External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh personally escorted the terrorists to Kandahar, a move that remains controversial to this day.

The Series: IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack

‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’, directed by Anubhav Sinha, was released on Netflix on August 29. The series is a dramatised retelling of the hijacking incident, featuring a star-studded cast including Vijay Varma, Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, and others. The series has garnered significant attention, not only for its portrayal of the hijacking but also for the controversy surrounding its representation of the terrorists.

The controversy erupted soon after the series’ release, with social media users accusing the filmmakers of distorting the facts surrounding the hijacking. The central issue revolves around the portrayal of the terrorists. The series uses the names “Shankar” and “Bhola” for the hijackers, which some viewers have interpreted as an attempt to obscure the real identities of the terrorists and their affiliations with Islamic extremist groups.

On platforms like X (formerly Twitter), hashtags such as #BoycottNetflix and #BoycottBollywood began trending, with users accusing the filmmakers of rewriting history and downplaying the terror inflicted by the actual hijackers. Some social media users claimed that the series was a “vile attempt” to whitewash terrorism and vilify the Hindu community by assigning Hindu names to the terrorists.

Amid the growing controversy, the Centre has taken note of the public outcry. According to sources, that the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has summoned Monika Shergill, the content head of Netflix India, to address the issue. 

Union Home Minister’s Statement (January 6, 2000)

In the immediate aftermath of the hijacking in 1999, the then Union Home Minister issued a detailed statement, revealing crucial information about the incident and the involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The Home Ministry statement reveals the arrest of four ISI operatives who were integral to the support cell for the hijackers. 

The statement categorically states that the hijackers – Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Shakir a.k.a Rajesh Gopal Verma, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim, Shahid Akhtar Sayed and Ibrahim Athar used nicknames like Bhola, Shankar, Doctor and Burger to address each other inside the plane.

“To the passengers of the hijacked place these hijackers came to be known respectively as (1) Chief, (2) Doctor, (3) Burger, (4) Bhola and (5) Shankar, the names by which the hijackers invariably addressed one another,” the government statement reads.

Although the film has triggered a controversy, it remains one of the most-watched series on Netflix since the day of its release.