The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has launched a scathing attack on the Netflix series ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’, accusing it of shifting blame away from the Pakistani terrorists involved in the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight. The party’s IT cell chief, Amit Malviya, alleges that the series, directed by Anubhav Sinha, ‘legitimises’ the criminal intent of the terrorists by using non-Muslim names for them.
Malviya claims that the real hijackers, all Muslims, adopted aliases to conceal their identities. By using these aliases in the series, he argues, the makers create the false impression that Hindus were involved in the hijacking, potentially misleading future generations.
The series, released on August 29th, has been met with online criticism and calls for boycott for its alleged attempt to obscure the true identities of the hijackers. Critics point to the use of codenames like ‘Bhola,’ ‘Shankar,’ ‘Doctor,’ ‘Burger,’ and ‘Chief’ for the five hijackers, arguing that this whitewashes their involvement in the incident.
Malviya, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), accuses the series of adhering to a ‘Left agenda’ to downplay the crimes of Pakistani terrorists. He asserts that this is a pattern in cinema, where the Left has been utilizing the medium to influence public perception since the 1970s.
The real hijackers – Ibrahim Athar, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Zahoor Ibrahim, Shahid Akhter, and Sayed Shakir – took control of the plane on its journey from Kathmandu to Delhi on December 24, 1999. The crisis ended with the release of three terrorists – Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh, and Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar – in exchange for 150 hostages.
Malviya argues that the series’ use of aliases undermines India’s security apparatus and distorts the true perpetrators of the hijacking, potentially creating a false narrative about the religious cohort responsible for the violence.
Mukesh Chhabra, the series’ casting director, has defended the use of codenames, stating that they were aliases used by the hijackers themselves. However, the BJP’s criticism highlights the sensitive nature of the incident and the potential for artistic interpretations to be perceived as politically motivated or historically inaccurate.
