A look at the eight-year-old chargesheet of the IC-814 hijack reveals a tale of one of the most meticulously planned terrorist operations India has ever seen. Ten persons working closely for over six-months with one single motive—freedom for Harkat-ul-Mujahideen chief Maulana Masood Azhar, who was then incarcerated in Jammu.

The story of the hijack begins in July 1998 when Maulana’s brother-in-law Yusuf Azhar first contacted Abdul Latif to start working on freeing Maulana. After a failed jailbreak attempt in June 1999, a hijack conspiracy started shaping up.

In first week of September 1999, the five hijackers—Ibrahim Athar, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Shahid Sayeed Akhtar, Zahoor Ibhrahim Mistri and Shakir—met at a rented flat in Dhaka’s Subzi Mandi area. Abdul Latif and Abdul Rauf were also present.

Athar, who had been working on the plan in Kathmandu for over a year, told the others that the Indian Airlines flight could be easily hijacked from Kathmandu.

“The Indian passengers only needed an identity card or driving license,” Athar told the other conspirators. It was decided that the plane would be hijacked and taken to Afganistan. The conspirators decided that if the Indian Government did not concede to their demand for the Maulana’s release, the plane would be blown off and the hijackers kill themselves.

Athar told Latif to go back to India and arrange documents to pass off the hijackers as Indian citizens. Pakistan national Abdul Rauf was the key financer of the project. For the next two months, Latif worked overtime to secure documents for every person involved. In the last week of October 1999, two of the conspirators, Shahid Sayeed Akhtar and Yusuf Nepali, arranged for three grenades and three revolvers from Kalimpong with the help of Dilip Kumar Bhujel.

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