Anubhav Sinha, one of the creators of the web series ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’ has come under severe criticism from the Right Wing on social media for using ‘Bhola’ and ‘Shankar’ as code names for two of the hijackers shown in the series.
Indian Airlines flight IC 814 from Kathmandu to Delhi with 176 passengers on board was hijacked by five Pakistani men on December 24, 1999, and was flown to multiple locations before landing in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The siege ended seven days later when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government partially conceded the demands of the hijackers and released three jailed terrorists — Maulana Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar – in exchange for the passengers. The Netflix series is based on these events.
Right-wing influencer Rishi Bagree claimed on X (formerly Twitter) that naming hijackers Bhola and Shankar in Anubhav Sinha’s web series amounted to cinematic ‘whitewashing’. At the time of this report being written, Bagree’s tweet has been viewed over 16 Lakh times and reshared over 16,000 times.
Kandahar flight hijackers’ original names:
* Ibrahim Athar
* Shahid Akhtar
* Sunny Ahmed
* Zahoor Mistry
* ShakirAdvertisementAnubhav Sinha hijacker web series IC 814 depicted as:
* Bhola
* ShankarThis is how whitewashing done cinematically pic.twitter.com/8WPzJqExNO
— Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree) August 31, 2024
Supreme Court lawyer Shahshank Sekhar Jha shared a poster of the web series on X and wrote: How to whitewash Islamist terrorism?! Hijackers of IC 814: Ibrahim Akhtar Shahid Akhtar Sayeed Sunny Ahmed Qazi Zahoor Mistry Shakir Hijackers of I C 814 as per @anubhavsinha: Bhola Shankar Burger Doctor.
Over 7,000 X users retweeted Jha’s tweet, including Jha himself.
Right-wing infuencer Raushan Sinha, who runs the X handle @MrSinha_, wrote in a tweet, “… Commie clown @anubhavsinha made a movie based on it & named the terrorists as Bhola & Shankar. Both after Lord Mahadev, purposely to defame Hinduism.”
The same claim — that the makers of the web series and Anubhav Sinha in particular had named the hijackers Bhola and Shankar — were made by several other users on X. Some of the users took sarcastic digs at the Sinha. Among them are Arun Pudur (@arunpudur), Kedar (@shintre_kedar), Kashmiri Hindu (@BattaKashmiri), The Jaipur Dialogues (@JaipurDialogues), Sameer (@BesuraTaansane), kaushik (@imkhimansh23), Rashmi Samant (@RashmiDVS), Aarohi Tripathi (@aarohi_vns), Rohith (@_rohithverse) and others.
Several of these tweets received 5000+ retweets making the claim go viral. ‘#BoycottNetflixIndia’ and ‘#BoycottNetflix’ started trending on X.
Also read: ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’ Is Competent, Evokes a Sense of Deja Vu
Some media outlets, too, reported that the makers of the web series were being slammed for ‘naming’ hijackers ‘Bhola’ and ‘Shankar’. Among them are Free press Journal, Mid-day and The Times of India. Republic claimed in an article that the identity of the terrorists had been changed and swapped in the web series. (Archive)
Fact check
We checked news reports on Google about the IC 814 hijack and found several articles that mentioned that two of the hijackers had used the code named Bhola and Shankar. A TOI report about a couple from Bhopal who were on the ill-fated flight (21 yrs on, Kandahar hijack still haunts Bhopal couple, published on December 24, 2020) starts, “Burger, Doctor, Chief, Bhola and Shankar… The names still bring nightmares to Durgesh and Renu Goel.”
The report further states, “Narrating the horror, Goel said, “Bhola and Burger used to hit passengers, while Doctor and Chief used to to talk with the authorities.”
Another report in the Nepal Times (Remembering IC814, published on December 31, 2019) quotes one of the passengers, Sanjay Dhital, as stating, “The five hijackers all had code names: Manager, Shankar, Bhola, Burger and Doctor.”
We found a report in the Financial Express (IC 814 hijack: How Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar’s brother planned Indian Airlines hijack in 1999, published on March 6, 2019) which specifically mentioned that each of the hijackers used a code name during the operation. According to the report, the names and code names of four of the hijackers were as follows:
Codenames of the IC 814 hijackers. Photo: AltNews
The fifth hijacker was Ibrahim Athar.
The use of code names has been corroborated by flight engineer Anil K Jaggia of IC 814, who in 2021 co-authored a book recounting his experience during the entire episode: IC 814 Hijacked: The Inside Story. See excerpt below
Excerpt from the book, IC 814 Hijacked: The Inside Story, authored by flight engineer Anil K. Jaggia. Photo: AltNews
A keyword search also revealed a statement released by the Union home minister a week after the siege ended. It states that interrogation of four arrested Harkat-ul-Ansar operatives revealed the names of the hijackers. It then adds,
“The hijackers named by these operatives are:
Ibrahim Athar, Bahawalpur
Shahid Akhtar Sayed, Gulshan Iqbal, Karachi
Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Defence Area, Karachi
Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim, Akhtar Colony, Karachi
Shakir, Sukkur city
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.
- Sunny Ahmed Qazi
- Shakir a.k.a Rajesh Gopal Verma
- Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim
- Shahid Akhtar Sayed
- Ibrahim Athar”
When was the real identity of the hijackers officially revealed?
On January 6, 2000. That is the day when the Union home ministry issued the above statement. It starts, “The security forces pursuing the trail of Pakistan’s Operation Hijack have made a significant breakthrough. Working in tandem with central intelligence agencies, the Mumbai Police has nabbed four ISI operatives based in Mumbai, who comprised the support cell for the five hijackers of the Indian Airlines Plane.
The Four HuA operatives arrested are: Mohammed Rehan, Mohammed Iqbal, Yasuf Nepali, Abdul Latif…. Interrogation of these four operatives has confirmed that the IAC Hijack was an ISI operation executed with the assistance of Harkat-ul-Ansar and further that all the five hijackers are Pakistanis.”
The Tribune reported on the same day (January 6), “The Union Home Minister, Mr L.K. Advani, said today that the identity of the five hijackers, including the brother of freed militant Maulana Masood Azhar, had been established…”
It further stated, “In his first press conference after the hijack crisis, Mr Advani said the five hijackers were identified as Ibrahim Akhtar, alias Athar from Bahawalpur, Shahid Akhtar Sayeed, a resident of Gulshan Iqbal, Karachi, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, a resident of Defence Area, Karachi, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim, Akhtar Colony, Karachi and Shaqir from Sukkur city. Ibrahim, identified as brother of Maulana Azhar, was known as “Chief”, Sayeed as “Doctor”, Qazi as “Burger”, Ibrahim as “Bhola” and Shaqir as “Shanker”, the names the hijackers used to addres each other on the aircraft.”
Brigadier Sameer Bhattacharya’s 2014 book Nothing But! corroborates this. See excerpt below:
Excerpt from Brigadier Sameer Bhattacharya’s 2014 book Nothing But!. Photo: AltNews
The readers should note the web series covers developments only till the release of the hostages on December 31.
To sum up, the code names ‘Bhola’ and ‘Shankar’ were indeed used by the IC 814 hijackers and these were not invented by the creators of the web series. The claim by the Right Wing that the Hindu names were used by the makers to whitewash the crime, therefore, does not stand.
Consequently, the news headlines which state the makers of the web series named the hijackers ‘Bhola’ and ‘Shankar’ are misleading. And the Republic article, which goes one step further to state that the hijackers’ identities were swapped in the series is entirely false.
This article was originally published on AltNews.
