Rajiv Thakur Recalls Witnessing IC 814 Hijacking In Amritsar: 'Plane Was Flying Unusually Low And...'

Actor-comedian Rajiv Thakur recently left the audience surprised with his role in Anubhav Sinha's IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack. He played the role of one of the hijackers, whose codename was Chief. With this web series, the actor has successfully managed to break out of his image as a comedian.

Now, in one of his recent interviews, Rajiv revealed that he witness the real IC 814 hijacking in Amritsar when he was in college in 1999. The web series, also starring Vijay Varma, is based the events of December 24, 1999, when an Indian Airlines flight IC 814 enroute to Delhi from Kathmandu was hijacked. The plane had landed in Amritsar for three hours after being hijacked.

Rajiv on witnessing the real IC 814 hijacking

During an interaction with Mid Day, Rajiv recalled being asked to rush home and remembered seeing commandos taking over the situation after the plane was hijacked. "I have seen it myself. I am from Amritsar, and we were in college. We were rehearsing for the youth festival, and back then, there were no mobile phones. I studied at Khalsa College, which was close to the airport. Suddenly, we noticed that a plane was flying unusually low and we were thinking that the plane looked very big," he said.

"While pondering over this, we went outside for tea, and by the time we returned, everyone was shouting, 'Run, run, anything can happen here!' In the meantime, we saw commandos arriving, and someone informed us that the flight had been hijacked. That memory is still etched in my mind. Within about 30 minutes, I reached home and told everyone that the flight had been hijacked. The family said it had been taken to Pakistan," Rajiv added.

IC 814 controversy

During the hijacking of IC 814, the terrorists used aliases or code names such as 'Burger', 'Doctor', 'Chief, 'Bhola' and 'Shankar'. As per historical record, the names of the terrorists were - Ibrahim Athar (alias Chief), Shahid Akhtar Sayed (alias Doctor), Sunny Ahmed Qazi (alias Burger), Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim (alias Bhola) and Shakir (alias Shankar).

Soon after the web series released on August 29, netizens protested against the Hindu code names given to the characters of the hijackers. While the makers had used the codenames of the hijackers in the show, critics felt that the makers should have clarified that in the web series.

The makers of IC 814 added real names of Pakistani hijackers in the show after massive backlash. An opening disclaimer has been added with all five original names of the terrorists by Netflix.

The six-episode hijack-drama also features Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Vijay Varma, Arvind Swamy, Patralekhaa, Kumud Mishra, Manoj Pahwa and Dia Mirza among others.