Was part of team dealing with 1984 hijack of plane, realised my father was on board: EAM S Jaishankar

Geneva/New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday said that as a junior IFS officer in 1984 he was part of a team which was dealing with the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane, when he discovered that his father, K Subrahmanyam, was on board the same flight.

During an interaction with the Indian community in Geneva, the EAM was asked by a member of the audience about the ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’ web series, which has kicked up a lot of controversy over alleged distortion of facts, and why the government is not doing anything about it.

Answering the question, the EAM said that he has not seen it and does not want to comment on it.

“To be fair I have not seen the film and I don’t want to comment on it. I will tell you something interesting. In 1984 there was a hijacking, I was a very young officer, I was part of the team which was dealing with it,” he said, referring to the August 24, 1984, hijack of Indian Airlines Flight 421 by Sikh extremists.

EAM said that while the negotiations were on he remembered that it was his turn to go home and feed his baby son lunch.

“Midway through the hijacking, I realised, around 3-4 hours later; those were the days you did not have cell phones; my son was a few months old, my wife used to work, so it was my day to go back home and feed my son at lunch. I rang up mother to say I can’t come back home as there is a hijacking.

“And then I discovered that my father was on the flight. The flight ended up in Dubai. It’s a long story, fortunately nobody got killed but it could have ended up wrongly; so I know, and it is interesting because I was part of the team which was working on the hijacking. On the other hand I was part of the family members who were pressing the government on the hijacking. So actually I had that unique window in both sides in that sense of the problem.”

Referring to the recently released web series, the EAM declined to comment.

“And look in movies, the movie guys don’t make the government look good, the hero is supposed to look good, not you, I think you have to accept that as part of the cost,” he said to laughter.

The EAM’s father K Subrahmanyam was a prominent international strategic affairs analyst, journalist and former Indian civil servant.

On Aug 24, 1984, a domestic flight from the Delhi's Palam Airport to Srinagar Airport with 74 people on board and demanded to be flown to the United States. The plane travelled to Lahore, then to Karachi and finally to Dubai, where the United Arab Emirates negotiated the release of the passengers and the surrender of the hijackers to UAE authorities.

To another question about “secret meetings” being held by foreign diplomats with Indian opposition politicians in the country, EAM Jaishankar said:

“I would only say this that, in fact I wo

uld make it a bigger issue, I’m just giving the larger principles of it; what happens in many countries is that they often practise abroad what they are sensitive to at home. So whenever people abroad do any such thing they must also think about what would happen if this happened in their own home.”

On international rankings critical of India, he said: “I have no problem if people comment about our politics, but then in fairness they should also be ready to hear my comments about their politics. And believe me, they have very thin skins about that.

“So how to get a more mutually respectful world, everybody says we are equal, but they don’t actually behave that way; it’s a bit like Animal Farm, some are more equal than others,” to laughter from the audience.

He said the effort to create a more mutually respectful world is part of the big debates taking place in the world currently.