“Nobody Has Right To…”: Why Netflix Content Chief Was Summoned Over ‘IC 814’

Amid the massive row surrounding Netflix webseries ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’, sources in the government have told NDTV that it is taking the matter very seriously and added that “nobody has the right to play with the sentiments of people of this country”.

“Nobody has the right to play with the sentiments of people of this nation. India’s culture and civilisation should always be respected. You should think before portraying something in a wrong manner. The government is taking it very seriously,” a highly-place source said.

This comes hours after Netflix India’s content chief Monika Shergill was summoned by the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry amid the row surrounding the webseries portraying the 1999 hijack of an Indian Airlines flight by Pakistan-based terror outfit Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.

Hundreds of social media users have accused creators of the web series of deliberately changing names of the hijackers to “Bhola” and “Shankar”. The series, created by Anubhav Sinha and Trishant Srivastava, is inspired by the book ‘Flight Into Fear: The Captain’s Story’ Devi Sharan, 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.

READ: Explained: Controversy Surrounding Netflix’s ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’

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.

Soon after Netflix started screening the webseries, a section of social media users criticised the creators for using “Bhola” and “Shankar” for terrorists’ names. 

Among those who slammed the creators of the show was BJP leader Amit Malviya. “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.