Jaswant Singh kept bullets from IC814 in his office. With a sign that read ‘Lest we forget’

Every day of the hijacking, my father was woken up at midnight by a call from wife of a crew member. He’d sit on the bed, listening to her crying every night.

File photo of former Union Minister Jaswant Singh | ANI

My dear boy, where do you think this plane will go,” asked an unmistakable voice over the phone. Asoke Mukherji, then India’s Consul General in Dubai, recognised the baritone sound and the precise delivery instantly. It was my father Jaswant Singh, the External Affairs Minister. The call came at 6:30 pm on 24 December 1999.

After the United Arab Emirates authorities denied permission for the hijacked IC814 to land in Dubai, KC Singh, India’s Ambassador to the UAE, used his contacts and got Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) al-Nahyan, the Commander of the Air Force and Air Defence, to relent.

He agreed to let the Indian Airlines plane land at Al Minhad Air Base. But that was the extent of the cooperation. Two senior Indian diplomats were barred from entering the air base, even as other cars were allowed.

When an exasperated and exhausted Mukerji reached home, he was stunned to learn that his wife had a live view of IC814 via CNN, but Indian officials were not allowed anywhere near it. MBZ’s younger brother Abdullah was the Minister for Information and Culture.

At around 4:00 am on Christmas Day, a group of SUVs with blackened glasses sped into the airbase from the direction of Al-Ain, the birthplace of MBZ. Indian vehicles were finally allowed into the airbase after 5:15 am, just in time to see IC814 lift off, once again for an unknown destination.

India learned of IC814’s next destination from a truly bizarre source—the Dubai station manager of Ariana Afghan Airlines. He had been repeatedly trying to get an Indian visa, but New Delhi wanted nothing to do with Kabul since the Taliban took over in 1996.

So, when the station manager called Mukerji to ask if he knew the destination, the Consul General replied in the negative. The manager promptly said, “I’ll tell you, it is going to Kandahar.” Worst scenarios and nightmares erupted across India.

New Delhi’s consulate in Dubai had prior experience with hijacking. In 1984, an Indian Airlines flight, IC421, which was hijacked by the All India Sikh Students Federation, also found itself on Emirati soil, also via Lahore. But that didn’t help them in this case.

A duty to protect

Hardeep Singh Puri, now Union Minister, was then an erudite joint secretary. A couple of months after the hijacking of IC814, he threw a fit when I told him that the publicly listed number of the external affairs minister rang directly in my father’s bedroom after office hours.

Every day of the hijacking, my father was woken up at midnight by the wife of a crew member. He would sit on the bed, listening to her crying every night. Just like other equally distraught family members of passengers who were wailing on the streets and threatening suicide. It became such a routine that father would wait for the calls. He’d only go to bed after he attended them.

As the father of a newborn, who arrived just as IC814 was about to enter Indian airspace and the annals of aviation history, both my daughter and this call would make sure I’d be awake.

Father never really opened up about the negotiations and how they were proceeding during those fraught days. All he shared was that the hijackers had a laundry list of over a hundred terrorists they wanted to be freed. At the top of that list was Nasrullah Langriar, while the three who were ultimately freed were much further down.

Once the options in Amritsar and Dubai were closed, father said we couldn’t allow harm to come to hundreds of innocents. “It is the moral responsibility of the state to protect the lives of innocent citizens,” was his constant refrain.

Many months later, when I visited his office in the South Block, I saw an unusual item on display on the mantelpiece—a truly undiplomatic choice for an external affairs minister who would receive diplomatic visitors from around the world. If memory serves me right, it was surrounded by equally bizarre gold-coloured decorations—bullets from a 9mm automatic pistol. There were no more than five or six of them, from a pistol left behind by the hijackers in the aircraft. They guarded a shiny brass plate that read, “Lest We Forget.” He truly never did.

Manvendra Singh is a BJP leader, Editor-in-Chief of Defence & Security Alert and Chairman, Soldier Welfare Advisory Committee, Rajasthan. He tweets @ManvendraJasol. Views are personal.

(Edited by Theres Sudeep)