Kandahar hijack: 3 sentenced to life

DH News Service, Chandigarh:

Nine years after the infamous hijack drama enacted at the Afghan city of Kandahar, three conspirators who provided logistic support to the Pakistani hijackers have been sentenced to life imprisonment by a court at Patiala, 60 km from here on Tuesday.

A special court of judge Inderjit Singh Walia has held Abdul Latif, Yusuf Nepali and Dalip Kumar guilty of abeting the hijackers by arranging arms and ammunition and providing fake passports to them. The judge awarded life sentence to them.

None of the five hijackers, believed to be of Pakistani origin, could ever be nabbed as the then Taliban regime in Afghanistan did not detain them after the resolution of the eight-day long siege of the aircraft in Kandahar. The three conspirators convicted to life on Tuesday were arrested in 2001. A prolonged trial ensued during which 120 witnesses were examined. They were among the 10 persons against whom the CBI had registered a case of abettment of hijackers. The remaining seven still remain absconding.

The hijack
The Indian Airlines flight IC-814 was hijacked by five men after it took off from Kathmandu while on way to Delhi on December 24, 1999. The hijackers forced the flight, with 189 passengers and crew on board, to take a detour to Kandahar in Afghanistan.

The eight-day long siege of the aircraft along with the Indian passengers ended after India conceded to the hijackers' demand for the release of three top militants, including the dreaded chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed outfit Maulana Masood Azhar imprisoned in jail at Jammu at that time.

The then external affairs minister Jaswant Singh had himself flown the three prisoners to Kandahar on a chartered plane for the hijackers to set free the passengers and permit the aircraft to leave Kandahar. One passenger Ripun Katyal was killed on board by the hijackers.

Azhar along with two other released prisoners, Ahmed Zargar and Ahmed Omar Sheikh went to Pakistan where Azhar floated Jaish outfit which was later involved in the attacks on Indian Parliament and the J and K assembly.
Sheikh was later sentenced to death in Pakistan for his role in the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl.