‘IC814 The Kandahar Hijack’: Vijay Varma, Dia Mirza, Pankaj Kapur Star In Series On India’s Longest Hijack

‘IC814 The Kandahar Hijack’, a series based on the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu in 1999, has been announced by Netflix in its slate for 2024. The cast of the series was announced and it stars Vijay Varma, Pankaj Tripathi, Naseeruddin Shah, Dia Mirza, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Pooja Gor, Kanwaljit Singh, Manoj Pahwa, Patralekhaa, Kumud Mishra, Yashpal Sharma and Aditya Srivastava. The series is helmed by Anubhav Sinha.

The story of the series revolves around an Indian Airlines flight, which was hijacked moments after the take off from Kathmandu. It remains the longest hijack in Indian aviation history.

Talking about the same, Anubhav Sinha revealed at the Netflix event, “You are 30,000 feet from the ground; the aircraft is in control by armed and dangerous people, and you don’t know what they want. You don’t know if they can be given what they want to spare your lives. You don’t know the lengths that people on the ground will go to, to negotiate a reasonable price for your lives. What went on inside the aircraft and outside, beyond geographical boundaries, while the aircraft landed in four different countries over one night? IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack is a very similar account of that infamous hijack from 1999 inside the aircraft, the War Room back home in Delhi, and the Negotiation Station in Kandahar. This is a story that created unexpected heroes out of the most unprecedented crises. This is a story of those seven days of mayhem, skill, and tact.”

Here’s the cast announcement:

Anubhav Sinha is known for projects like ‘Anek’, ‘Mulk’, ‘Bheed’, ‘Article 15’ and ‘Thappad’.

For those caught unaware, IC-814 was hijacked by five terrorists on December 24, 1999, around 40 minutes after it took off from Kathmandu. It carried 180 passengers at the time, and they were all held hostage for seven days. The flight flew from Kathmandu to Amritsar and then to Lahore. It was re-fuelled in Lahore and left for Dubai, and then to Taliban-controlled Kandahar, where all the passengers were released on December 31, 2000. Three terrorists, including Jaish-e- Mohammad supremo Masood Azhar, who was released in exchange for hostages.