Netflix series on Kandahar hijacking is an expensive PR job for Pakistan's ISI, a straight-out lie, says Vir Sanghvi

IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, the series, is loosely based on the 1999 hijack of the Indian aircraft IC 814 by five terrorists.

The makers of the series faced the wrath of netizens who claimed the Pakistani terrorists' names of the hijackers were deliberately changed to "Bhola” and “Shankar”, after Hindu god Lord Shiva.

However, the veteran journalist has flagged some crucial factual anomalies beyond the polarised Hindu right wing versus Liberal discourse.

He said in a long blog post on his website, "This is a straight-out lie. The hijacking was an ISI operation, part of the covert war that Pakistan has waged against India for decades.

"You can tell which route the narrative intends to take when it shows an Indian agent (described as a First Officer in the embassy: no such post exists) tracking a Pakistani diplomat. But the Pakistani, we then learn, is a mere minion; the true leader of the plot is an Afghan."

Sanghvi has lashed out at the makers for not even mentioning the attackers were Pakistanis though the Indian intelligence agencies had clearly mentioned that the operatives were from the neighbouring country.

"My problem is with the second element of the series: its account of what happened on the ground. This is inaccurate and often childish and silly. It is also a lie. The deliberate evasions and inventions turn the whole show into an expensive PR job for the ISI," he wrote.

"This story-line, unsupported by any convincing factual evidence that I have seen in 25 years, is used to suggest that R&AW had advance intelligence about the plot, and that an Indian agent even tried to stop the plane from taking off. This is a lie. R&AW is then shown resorting to torturing Nepalese civilians to extract information about the plot. All of this is fabricated. It is not some ‘creative liberty’," he wrote.

"These fabrications are integral to the series’ message: yes, the terrorists may have been bad men but the other side (i.e. the Indian government) was not much better: incompetent fools who were also torturers."

"It is a strange position for an Indian TV series made for an Indian audience to take without any solid evidence to back up this story-line," the senior journalist added.

"That, rather than the Hindu-Muslim aspect, is my objection to the series. If you tell lies about an extremely important event in our recent history to a generation that is too young to remember what actually happened, your falsehoods and untruths become the accepted version and the truth is buried," the former Indian editor said.

Vir Sanghvi is a senior Indian journalist and former editor. Photo courtesy: Virsangvi.com

Sanghvi wrote, "The Hindu nicknames offered up by the hijackers were obviously false. But they did actually use such names as Bhola and Shankar to describe themselves. To faithfully record this fact on the screen is not to demean the Hindu community but to record what actually happened.

"Equally, the liberal response that the series is true to the facts and (despite a few ‘creative liberties’) tells us what really happened is no more than a knee-jerk counter response to the Hindu right wing’s campaign."

The series is directed by Anubhav Sinha and written by Adrian Levy and Trishant Srivastava.

Produced by Sarita Patil and Sanjay Routray under Matchbox Shots and Benaras Mediaworks, it stars an ensemble cast led by Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Vijay Varma, Dia Mirza and Arvind Swamy.

Earlier this week, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had summoned Netflix content head Monika Shergill over the controversy.