1971 Indian Airlines hijacking
hijacking of Indian Airlines domestic passenger airliner
On 30 January 1971, an Indian Airlines Fokker F27, named Ganga, flying from Srinagar to Jammu, was hijacked by two Kashmiri separatists belonging to the National Liberation Front (NLF). The aircraft was flown to Lahore Airport in Pakistan, where the passengers and the crew were released, and was burnt down three days later. The hijackers were later identified as Hashim Qureshi and his cousin Ashraf Qureshi.
India claimed that Pakistan was behind the hijacking and subsequently banned overflights of Pakistani aircraft over the Indian territory. Pakistani authorities arrested the hijackers, and a one-man investigation committee consisting of a Pakistani judge, declared the hijacking to be an Indian conspiracy. While several people were arrested in connection with the case, only Hashim Qureshi was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison. India never responded to Pakistani allegations, and Hashim Qureshi later stated that only NLF was behind the hijack.
Background
Aircraft
The aircraft involved was a Fokker F27, named Ganga, which was one of the oldest aircraft in the Indian Airlines fleet. It had already been withdrawn from regular commercial service earlier but was re-inducted a few days before the hijacking.
Hijackers
The hijackers were Hashim Qureshi and his cousin, Ashraf Qureshi.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1971 Indian Airlines hijacking” as hijacking of Indian Airlines domestic passenger airliner. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as hijacking of Indian Airlines domestic passenger airliner. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4574523. Authority coordinates are 33.987, 74.774. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1971.
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This entry incorporates text from “1971 Indian Airlines hijacking” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.