Captain Devi Sharan Age, Wife, Children, Family, Biography

Some Lesser Known Facts About Devi Sharan

• On 24 December 1999, he was the pilot of the Indian Airlines Flight IC 814 which took off from Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal.

• Along with him, the aircraft had first officer Rajinder Kumar, flight engineer Anil Kumar Jaggia, crew members and 176 passengers including 5 hijackers set off for Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi.

• After the takeoff, the flight was hijacked by five masked Pakistani militants of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, who demanded the release of several high-profile terrorists imprisoned in India including Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Masood Azhar.

• The hijackers forced Devi Sharan to divert the flight towards Lucknow and then head towards Lahore but Devi Sharan requested the militants to land the flight in Amritsar, Punjab for refuelling.

• Thereafter, the aircraft was taken to Lahore as directed by the hijackers where the Pakistani air traffic control denied permission for landing and switched off the airway lights but later allowed the plane to land.

• Later, Devi Sharan stated in an interview that he had planned to scare the Pakistani air traffic control by pretending to crashland the aircraft on the highway.

• After refuelling, the aircraft landed in Dubai, where a few injured passengers including children, ladies, and senior citizens were offloaded with the dead body of Rupin Katyal, who was murdered by the militants.

• Thereafter, the aircraft flew to Kandahar, where the Indian government had to negotiate with the militants. On 31 December 1999, the Indian government released three of the terrorists and the Pakistani militants released the Indian hostages.
  

  Hostages released by the militants

• In 2000, a book titled Flight into Fear: The Captain’s Story was published which was written by him and journalist Srinjoy Chowdhury. In 2019, the rights to the book were bought by film producer Sarita Patil.
  

  Sarita Patil with Devi Sharan holding Flight Into Fear: The Captain’s Story book

• When the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021, Devi expressed his disappointment on the issue and said that the behaviour of the Taliban remained unchanged since the 1999 hijack, only they might have become a little more educated.

• Some of the Hindi films that were based on the hijacking events of the Indian Airlines Flight IC 814 are Zameen (2003), Hijack (2008), and the Malayalam film Kandahar (2010).
  

  A poster of the Malayalam film Kandahar (2010)

• In 2024, a mini-series was made depicting the incident of the IC 814 hijacking case known as IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, which premiered on Netflix.