IC-814 hijackers’ Hindu codenames trigger row

The ministry of information & broadcasting on Monday summoned senior officials of Netflix over its web series IC-814 - The Kandahar Hijack after the drama based on the 1999 hijack of an Indian Airlines flight by five terrorists triggered a row over the depiction of the hijackers, and more specifically the aliases they used. According to a senior government official aware of the details, the officials of the OTT platform appeared before the ministry to provide an explanation amid allegations by social media users and political party leaders that the six-episode series, directed by Anubhav Sinha and released last week, deliberately used the codenames “Bhola” and “Shankar” to identify two of the five terrorists. To be sure, the Union home ministry in 2000 said the five hijackers referred to one another as “Chief”, “Doctor”, “Burger”, “Bhola” and “Shankar” — with the last also being names often used for the Hindu god Shiva. Anil Sharma, senior flight purser who is now based in Geneva, said: “The two names that are being talked about were actually used by the hijackers… I think the makers of the web series could have somehow specified that the names were not their original names.” The web series is based on the hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft by five terrorists on December 24, 1999, 40 minutes after it took off from Kathmandu for New Delhi.