IC-814 hijack: Congress seeks response from intelligence agencies

New Delhi : Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi on Friday refrained from commenting on former Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) chief A S Dulat’s statement that the Crisis Management Group (CMG) had not handled the IC-814 hijack incident properly and said that it must be better answered by the intelligence agencies. “This is the view of a person who is writing a book, you should really ask him. It is not something on which anybody can opine. It is a description by Mr. A about Mr. B’s views on C. These are the matters peculiar to intelligence agencies, you should ask them,” Singhvi told ANI. The former RAW chief told a leading English newspaper in an interview earlier that the Crisis Management Group (CMG) had ‘goofed up’ the operation. He stated that the hijackers gained an upper hand once the plane flew out of India. In 1999, IC-814, which was en route from Kathmandu to New Delhi, was hijacked by terrorist group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan. The crisis lasted for seven days and ended after India agreed to release three militants – Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Maulana Masood Azhar.