New Delhi:

News agency ANI has sued Netflix Inc and producers of an Indian series about a plane hijack, asking for four episodes to be taken down as they used ANI content without permission, ANI’s lawyer told Reuters on Monday.

The series, called “IC-814: The Kandahar Hijack” – a fictionalised version of the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814 from Kathmandu – has been embroiled in controversy since its release last month.

Social media users and members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party have criticised the show for what they said was an incorrect portrayal of the hijackers as Hindus with Hindu names when they were Muslims.

Netflix added new disclaimers to the six-episode show last week after its officials were summoned by the information and broadcasting ministry. It also said the code names used in the series reflected those used during the actual event.

“They have used copyright archival footage of ANI without licence, they have also used the (ANI) trademark,” Sidhant Kumar, counsel for ANI, said.

“Since the series has come into such criticism, our trademark and brandname are being tarnished,” Mr Kumar said, adding that ANI wants Netflix to take down four episodes where its content has been used.

The Delhi High Court had agreed to hear the case and sought the response of Netflix, he said.

There was no immediate response from Netflix to a request for comment from Reuters, which has a minority stake in ANI.

India blames Pakistan and Pakistan-based terrorist groups for the December 1999 hijack, which was resolved after New Delhi freed three terrorists, including Masood Azhar, the head of one such group.

New Delhi:

The content head of Netflix India has been summoned by the government amid the massive controversy surrounding ‘IC 814 – The Kandahar Hijack’, a webseries on the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight by Pakistan-based terror outfit Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, sources have said.

The Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry to Netflix India chief Monika Shergill comes after hundreds of social media users accused the makers of the web series of deliberately changing the names of the hijackers to “Bhola” and “Shankar”. The web series, created by Anubhav Sinha and Trishant Srivastava, is inspired by the book ‘Flight Into Fear: The Captain’s Story’ Devi Sharan, who was the captain of the flight and journalist Srinjoy Chowdhury. It stars Naseeruddin Shah, Vijay Varma and Pankaj Kapur in key roles. 

The web series captured the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814 on December 24, 1999. The plane, with 191 fliers onboard, took off from Nepal’s Kathmandu and was headed for Delhi. Soon after take-off, five hijackers, who were posing as passengers, took control of the plane. It later made several landings, at Amritsar, Lahore and Dubai, before being taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan.

The government, then led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was forced to release three dreaded terrorists — Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar — from Indian prisons to secure the release of the hostages. According to reports, Taliban authorities helped the hijackers and the released terrorists reach Pakistan.

A Union Home Ministry statement dated January 6, 2000, said the names of the hijackers were Ibrahim Athar, Shahid Akhtar Sayed, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim and Shakir.

“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 Home Ministry statement says. 

Multiple journalists who covered the week-long hijacking back in 1999 have put out social media posts amid the controversy, saying that passengers had told them that the hijackers used these names to address each other.

Earlier, BJP leader Amit Malviya was among those who slammed the makers of the webseries for using these names. “The hijackers of IC-814 were dreaded terrorists, who acquired aliases to hide their Muslim identities. Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha, legitimised their criminal intent, by furthering their non-Muslim names. Result? Decades later, people will think Hindus hijacked IC-814,” he said in a post on X. “Left’s agenda to whitewash the crimes of Pakistani terrorists, all Muslims, served. This is the power of cinema, which the Communists have been using aggressively, since the 70s. Perhaps even earlier,” he added.