My father was forced to release terrorists: Omar Abdullah on IC 814 hijack incident

Former J&K chief minister and National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah has shed light on the difficult decisions faced by his father, Farooq Abdullah, during the 1999 IC814 hijacking incident.

In an interview, Omar Abdullah revealed that the IC814 hijack was not the first instance where his father was compelled to release prisoners.

Rubaiya case cited

Families of the hijacked victims used the Rubaiya Sayeed incident as the pretext. They said when you could release terrorists for a Home minister’s daughter, are our families not precious?  Omar Abdullah, Vice-president, NC

He cited a previous case involving Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of former home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who was kidnapped by Kashmiri separatists in 1989. The Central Government, led by VP Singh, had released five jailed terrorists of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) in exchange for Rubaiya’s safe release.

“This was the second time my father was forced to release people. Families of the hijacked victims used the Rubaiya Sayeed incident as the benchmark. They said when you could release terrorists for a Home Minister’s daughter, are our families not precious? Why is it that only she is precious to the country? If she is precious to you, our families are precious to us. So we set a benchmark that had to be followed,” Abdullah said.

Notably, the IC814 hijack has become a hot topic of conversation and is spanned with controversy and concerns about the names of terrorists being used in the Anubhav Sinha directed series on Netflix, “IC814: The Kandahar Hijack.”

Omar Abdullah emphasised that the precedent set during the Rubaiya Sayeed incident became a benchmark for the families of the hijacked individuals, who demanded equal consideration and safety during the IC814 hijack in 1999.

“I think the Union Government had an option. I think the government at the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping time had the option of not negotiating with terrorists. They chose to negotiate. After that, once you’ve done it once, then you have to do it again,” Abdullah said.

Regarding the execution of Afzal Guru, Omar Abdullah clarified that the J&K Government had no involvement in the process. He stated that if state approval had been required, it would not have been granted. “The unfortunate thing was that the J&K government had nothing to do with Afzal Guru’s execution. Otherwise, you would have had to do it with the permission of the state government, which I can tell you in no uncertain terms would not have been forthcoming. We wouldn’t have done it,” Abdullah said.