WION Exclusive | Operation Sindoor: As India avenge Kandahar, IC-814 staff recounts harrowing hijack story

In the aftermath of Pahalgam terror attack, Indian Armed forces launched Operation Sindoor, where they carried out a series of precision strikes targeting nine terror camps and launchpads, in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

The Indian Armed Forces in a joint press conference said that on May 7, after the terror attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 people, Indian air strikes on terror camps in Pakistan killed over hundred terrorists. Among the dead were Yusuf Azhar, Abdul Malik Rauf and Mudassir Ahmed, all involved in the hijack of IC-814 aircraft and the Pulwama attack.

On hearing the news, Anil Sharma, cabin-in-charge of the hijacked IC-814 flight felt something he hadn’t in decades: relief. "Karma had caught up. These people lived by the gun, and they died by it. It doesn’t bring back Rupin Katyal or erase the horror, but it brings justice."

The news of the operation did more than just offer symbolic closure—it validated the resilience of survivors and the resolve of a nation that had vowed never to forget Kandahar. "When I heard about Operation Sindoor, I felt that finally, the country had stood up and said: Enough."

Anil Sharma spoke exclusively to WION and shared his memories about the traumatic incident.

On the 24th of December, 1999, Indian Airlines flight IC-814 departed from Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport at 4:30 PM. Onboard were 179 passengers and 11 crew members, all looking forward to returning home for Christmas and to spend time with their loved ones.

Among them was Anil Sharma, the senior cabin crew member and in-charge of the flight. For Sharma and everyone else on that ill-fated flight, the routine journey turned into an eight-day nightmare, remembered in history as one of India’s most traumatic hostage crises.

Forty minutes into the flight, Sharma walked into the cockpit to check on the pilots and ask if they needed some refreshments. The cabin service had been carried out, and everything seemed normal until he stepped out and was confronted by a man wearing a monkey cap, holding a pistol. In terse Urdu, the man said, "We are taking over the aircraft."

What followed was violence and chaos. Passengers were asked to shift from business class to economy, and the hijackers—five of them, later given codenames like Chief, Doctor, Burger, Bhola, and Shankar—took control of the aircraft. The plane was diverted first to Amritsar, then Lahore, then Dubai, and finally to Kandahar in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

For Anil Sharma, the trauma didn’t begin with the threat of death—it began with the responsibility of keeping terrified passengers calm, comforting the wounded, and maintaining some semblance of order inside an aircraft surrounded by terrorists carrying rocket launchers.

"The fear was all-pervasive," Sharma recalls. "It lasted all those seven nights and eight days. But it became even more horrifying when I and my colleague, Satish, had to lift the dead body of Rupin Katyal to be offloaded in Dubai. That moment—placing his lifeless form on the step ladder—remains seared in my memory."

The hijackers were strategic and brutal. They kept the passengers under psychological pressure. Heads had to be kept down. Men were slapped and kicked. The women in the cabin crew were told to cover their heads whenever Taliban fighters approached the plane. Sharma and his team had to manage food and water, not just for the passengers, but for the terrorists as well.

"They made us prepare tea for them, clean up after them. We were like their servants, but all the while, we were calculating how to survive."

Hope and despair danced together through the ordeal. On December 27, when a high-level Indian delegation, including current NSA Ajit Doval, landed in Kandahar to negotiate, spirits lifted. "I saw smiles on the hijackers’ faces. I thought things were moving forward," Sharma said. But it was a false dawn. By December 30, the hijackers had moved women and children to business class and announced, "If we can kill one, we can will kill all."

Sharma and others braced themselves for the worst. "At that moment, I was benumbed. I wasn’t registering emotion anymore. I had resigned to either going back alive or returning in a coffin."

The hijackers weren’t ordinary criminals. They were trained terrorists, fighting a proxy war on behalf of Pakistan's ISI and Army, using organisations like Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba. Their demand was the release of Maulana Masood Azhar, a terrorist who was then in Indian custody.

When India finally agreed to release Azhar and two others, the hostages were let go. But for Sharma, it wasn’t the end. "You don’t walk out of something like that and return to normal. But I always believed in resuming the ‘silly things’ of life—watching movies, enjoying tea with friends—because trauma shouldn’t define you."

Yet, the shadow never truly lifted. Sharma wrote a book about his experience, but closure remained elusive. Until recently.

Sharma is deeply patriotic. His voice carries more pain when talking about divisions within India than when he discusses his own trauma. "We have too many enemies outside India. But it’s the enemies inside—those who hate for the sake of hating, who find fault in everything just because of political bias—that worry me more."

In his reflections, Sharma doesn’t seek sympathy. Instead, he offers perspective. "Yes, it affected me. But I chose not to be bitter. I chose to return to life. I still remember Burger, one of the hijackers, telling me once: 'Sharma saab, main aapke saath khaana khaaunga, don't worry.' (Sir, don’t you worry, I will sit with you and have dinner with you). Even in terror, there were shades of humanity, but that doesn’t absolve them."

He ends his recollection with a prayer: "I hope and believe that justice will find every last one of them. The fight against terrorism is long, but I’m optimistic. If we can survive Kandahar, we can survive anything."