The Indian Airlines flight IC-814 flying from Kathmandu to Delhi was hijacked on 24 December 1999 while flying over Lucknow. The plane was taken first to Lahore, then to Amritsar and finally to Kandahar, Afghanistan. The lives of 189 passengers was negotiated by the Indian government with the release of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar (he floated the JeM soon after his release, which went on to become the most dreaded terror outfit in J&K), Omar Sayeed Sheikh (now in Pakistan prison for the killing of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl) and Mushtaq Zargar, chief of Al-Umar Mujahideen militant outfit.
The verdict for the same came on 5 February 2008 wherein the Judge Inderjit Singh Walia convicted three out of the ten accused for colluding with the hijackers by arranging their passport, stay, tickets and arms. The remaining seven, including the five hijackers are as per the CBI hiding in Pakistan. The trial was held in a designated court i.e. an anti-hijacking court which was setup under the IPC provisions and anti-hijacking law, which became fully functional only in March 2001. The shifting of the proceedings to inside the Patiala prison was condemned by the defence lawyers, who boycotted the trial for over a year.
The accused Abdul Latif, Yusuf Nepali and Dalip Bhujail were convicted and given life imprisonment for their role in the hijack. They were convicted for various offences under the IPC and the Anti-Hijacking law. The table below gives a list of the charges against the culprits and the punishment awarded to them.
| Crime convicted for: |
Punishment: |
| Murder (Section 302) and Violence in aircraft after hijacking (Section 5 of Anti-Hijacking Act) |
Life Imprisonment |
| Attempt to Murder (Section 307) |
7 years R.I. |
| Kidnapping, Abduction (Section 363) and Wrongful confinement (Section 342) |
5 years |
| Forgery (Section 467) |
5 years and Rs.2000 fine |
| Criminal Intimidation (Section 506) |
3 years and Rs. 2000 fine |
| Possessing illegal weapons (Section 25 of Arms Act) |
3 years |
The prosecution argued that while they were not directly involved in the crime, they played an important role of providing logistical support, as also helping in procuring and hiding the arms used in the crime. The defence counsel BS Sodhi on the other hand said that his clients had been made scapegoats and that the prosecution did not record the evidence gathered by the investigative agencies from Dubai and Bangladesh. He contended that the verdict is allegation-based and as such is not sufficient to award life imprisonment and hence they would appeal against the verdict in the Punjab and Haryana High Court
The present verdict highlights that in the last eight years the government of India has not been able to nab the seven accused, including the five hijackers. The CBI director Vijay Shankar has stated that while the help received from the governments of Nepal and UAE had been exemplary, no cooperation whatsoever was extended by the Pakistan government. During the investigations, the arrest warrants of the remaining seven accused were forwarded to Islamabad by the CBI for their extradition to India at the earliest. Yet the position as of today is that the CBI has got red corner notices issued from the Interpol against those seven Pakistani nationals.
In a January 2008 interview, Jaswant Singh, the then foreign minister who had accompanied the terrorist for negotiations to Afghanistan, said that it was only later that he realized that the manner in which the hijack was conducted i.e. using an aircraft as a weapon of destruction, had an uncanny similarity with the subsequent attacks on the twin towers. As per him it was a kind of dry run for what was to come. Underlying this realization is a disturbing fact that the nation which is a part of the 'Global War on Terrorism' and that has taken huge amounts of money from the US to fight for it has done nothing substantial to help the premier investigation agency of India in its fight for justice. This case clearly demonstrates the consequence of lack of international cooperation in combating terrorism.
Notwithstanding the significance of the verdict for the CBI, and for the nation at large, the case throws up certain disturbing aspects. First, the verdict against the perpetrators of a crime that had gripped the nation in absolute terror for a week took eight long years in coming. Second, for all those who survived, justice will only be done when the real hijackers are brought, booked, and convicted. Till then, this conviction and verdict seems nothing but a meaningless verdict.
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