Indian Airlines Flight 814
aircraft hijacking
Indian Airlines Flight 814, commonly known as IC 814, was an Indian Airlines Airbus A300 that was hijacked on 24 December 1999 by five members of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. The passenger flight, en route from Kathmandu to Delhi, was taken over shortly after it entered Indian airspace at about 16:53 IST. The aircraft had 190 occupants: 179 passengers and 11 crew members including Captain Devi Sharan, First Officer Rajinder Kumar, and Flight Engineer Anil Kumar Jaggia.
The aircraft was flown to Amritsar, Lahore, and Dubai. While in Dubai, the hijackers released 27 passengers plus the body of a male passenger whom the hijackers had stabbed multiple times at Amritsar. Later, on 25 December, the hijackers forced the pilots to land in Kandahar in Afghanistan. Most of Afghanistan, including Kandahar, was under the control of the Taliban at the time. External intervention was hindered by Taliban men encircling the aircraft, and by the presence of two officers from the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan. On 27 December after two days of internal discussions, the Government of India sent a team of negotiators headed by Vivek Katju from the Ministry of Home Affairs, which included officials Ajit Doval and C. D. Sahay. After days of negotiations, India agreed to release three men it had imprisoned for terrorism – Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar – in exchange for the hostages.
The hostage crisis ended on 31 December when the passengers and crew were released after the Indian government handed the three prisoners over to the Taliban.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Indian Airlines Flight 814” is aircraft hijacking. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Indian, Airlines and Flight, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “aircraft hijacking” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2009640. The Library of Congress control number is sh2001003557. Authority coordinates are 31.506, 65.848. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1999.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Indian Airlines Flight 814”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Indian Airlines Flight 814 primary sources, Indian Airlines Flight 814 archive and Indian research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Indian Airlines Flight 814”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Indian Airlines Flight 814” 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.