Business Recorder, Pakistan, Oct 02(?), 2001
Red alert at airports sounded as RAW's plot to hijack plane unearthed

QUETTA : Indian secret service, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), is said to have chalked out a plan to stage a calculated plane hijack drama involving Pakistan to meet its clandestine ends. "The sensitive security agencies of Pakistan have intercepted a conversation among the RAW officers, revealing that the RAW intends to hijack a plane of a big air line to bring it to Pakistan in a bid to get Pakistan declared a terrorist state," said the high placed sources here.

According to the sources, the government of Pakistan has sounded a high alert at all the airports in the country to thwart such a conspiracy by India.

The security has also been beefed up in view of the emerging situation, and the aviation authorities have been directed not to allow any such plane to land on the Pakistani soil.

It is pertinent to note here that soon after the September 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington, the Indian government had offered its airspace and military bases to the United States for any potential military action against the perpetrators and harbourers of these attacks.

Similarly, the Indian authorities had also issued a fake statement of the Jaish-e-Muhammad for its alleged claiming of the Monday's suicidal car bomb attack in front of the State Assembly in the occupied Kashmir to misguide the world opinion towards the freedom struggle in occupied Kashmir.

It may recalled that the Jaish-e-Muhammad on Tuesday forcefully refuted its involvement in the Monday's car blast in occupied Srinagar, terming it a deep conspiracy by the Indian agencies to malign the freedom struggle.-NNI

The News International, Thursday October 04, 2001
Indian plane hijacked

Boeing commandeered by 2 hijackers lands in New Delhi; Pak airports alerted

NEW DELHI: A Boeing 737 belonging to India's state-run Alliance Air was hijacked just after take-off from Bombay. The plane landed in the Indian capital at around 1:00 am (1930 GMT Wednesday), officials here said.

The plane, reportedly carrying 54 passengers and crew, was surrounded by federal commandos at a "secluded area" of the New Delhi's Indira Gandhi airport, officials said. Sources said a two-member squad had hijacked the Boeing 737 and added the attackers were males who "did not speak very well in English."

Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain said the pilots of the commandeered plane had asked for engineers but could not offer more details. "We just got one message. The pilot did not give any more details. Our contigency plans are in place," Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain said.

The minister added that all the passengers on board the aircraft were "safe." The Alliance Air flight No. CD 7444, on its way to Delhi, was hijacked after passing Ahmedabad, initial reports said.

The Civil Aviation Ministry sources also said the pilots of the Alliance Air plane, carrying a total of 46 passengers and an eight-member crew, had locked themselves in the cockpit and were refusing to open the door.

The Star News said all the passengers were unharmed but that they remained aboard the jet, which was parked at an isolated area at Indira Gandhi International Airport. The plane was surrounded by police and commandos.

The authorities had opened a communications link with the hijackers. Witnesses at the Indira Gandhi airport here said a fuel truck had been parked near the aircraft. Aviation sources said the tip-off about the hijacking had been made through an anonymous phone call to the police. India, meanwhile, sounded a nationwide alert at its civilian and military airports. Alliance Air is a subsidiary of the Indian Airlines.

India's Civil Aviation Secretary A.H. Jang described the hijackers as "menacing". "They are menacing. Menacing enough for the pilots not to open the cockpit doors," Jang said, adding the parked plane had been "immobilised" by placing trucks in its path.

"We have established contact with the pilots. The cockpit is safe. There are two people who speak little English. "We have communication with the crew and they stated the hijackers have something in their hands," the official told reporters at New Delhi airport.

Jang said elite National Security Guard commandos ringing the plane had several options -- ranging from "storming the plane" to 'welcoming the hijackers" in case they surrendered.-AFP

Meanwhile, Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) ordered an alert at all airports across the country, with a high alert ordered at Lahore airport, because of its proximity to New Delhi, CAA officials said here, in the early hours of Thursday. All precautionary measures have been taken with preparations made to block runways at any moment, in case the hijacked Indian airliner heads towards Pakistan.

Indian ploy to defame Pakistan: spokesman

By our correspondent

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan intelligence officials had intercepted some Indian officials talk two days ago that India is planning to stage hijacking and implicate Pakistan, a government spokesman told The News early on Thursday. He said that the said report was carried by some newspapers in Pakistan. He said hijacking is an Indian government ploy to defame Pakistan.

Paknews.com, updated on 2001-10-04 16:14:49
Pakistan closes airspace in fear of another Indian State Sponsored Hijack Drama

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Thursday immediately closed its airspace except one approach. Incoming flights from abroad are being diverted to the route from Karachi to Islamabad via Nawabshah, Rahimyar Khan and Lahore. Any other plane which reaches Pakistan’s airspace has been ordered to shot down.

On Oct 4th midnight Indian Secret Agencies hijacked an Indian domestic flight and the government immediately blamed Pakistan till the whole drama became an embarasement for Indian Govt. India is busy trying to malign Pakistan with its cheap propaganda and could go to any length. In the wake of this Hijack drama by Indian Govt, Pakistan Aviation has closed its airspace.

In other developments, Pakistani intelligence Agencies have already shared enormous amount of human intelligence with American Military for an Air Strike on Afghanistan. Pakistan has already agreed to provide its airspace to USA for any such attack on Afghanistan. This could also be a step in clearing up the skies over Pakistan for any possible attack on Afghanistan by USA.

Paknews.com, updated on 2001-10-04 13:21:00
Indian plane hijack Drama

NEW DELHI: A Boeing 737 belonging to India's state-run Alliance Air was reported to be hijacked for four hours at around 1:00 am (1930 GMT Wednesday), just after take-off from Bombay. Later on it was officially revealed that the whole news was based on some confusion.

BBC remarked it as baseless news and blamed Indian Aviation for creating such chaos and confusion for pilots and some fifty odd passengers who went to a delima of extreme mental anxiety for fours hours in the air.

Reportedly, pilots in the cockpit locked the doors thinking that hijackers were in the passenger area, while the passengers thought that hijackers were in the cockpit. Initially Indian Interior ministry also made a press release about the hijack plane, but later they said it was a confusion.

Indian officials are continuously trying to get world attention with their malicious propaganda against Pakistan. Lately the killing of more than 30 Civilians in the Indian Occupied Kashmir was another staged massacre by the Indian Army. Amnesty International is still asking India to let their staff investigate the massacre of 35 Sikhs which were brutally done during the visit of President Clinton to India. At the time of massacre, India pointed all its fingers on Pakistan, but later on, it became open to the world that the whole thing was designed by Indian Intelligence Agency (RAW) to malign Pakistan. Amnesty International till date is not allowed to visit Indian Occupied Kashmir, where more than 70,000 Kashmiris have died in last 10 years. Kashmiris are demanding independence from Indian rule for past 50 years. U.N. has passed a resolution in 1948 giving rights to Kashmiris for self determination.

rediff.com, Oct 04 2001
Bizarre 'hijack' drama ends peacefully

A bizarre four-hour 'hijack' involving an Alliance Air Boeing 737 with 52 people on board ended peacefully early on Thursday morning, after an embarrassed government blamed 'false alarm' for the comedy of errors that kept Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the country's top security establishment on tenterhooks during the night.

The flight that left Bombay at 11.15 pm on Wednesday night on its way to Delhi was declared 'hijacked' over Ahmedabad and landed shortly before 1 am amidst full security and emergency drill at Delhi airport.

Three hours later, all passengers went home unharmed from the 'hijack' that never was.

As relatives of passengers on board rushed to the airport on hearing the news from television networks that brought live the coverage, the government's Crisis Management Group assembled under the chairmanship of Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani at 2.15 am.

Woken up from their sleep, Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain, National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra, Foreign Secretary Chokila Iyer as well as defence and home secretaries and top intelligence bosses raced to the meeting.

In the end it was discovered that there had been a miscommunication between the Air Traffic Controller at Ahmedabad and the pilot of the flight CD 7444 of Alliance Air, a subsidiary of Indian Airlines.

The Ahmedabad ATC had received an anonymous call that the flight would be hijacked, which then informed Captain Ashwani Bahal that the flight had been hijacked.

The pilot locked the cockpit believing that the hijackers were in the passenger cabin.

He brought the plane to Delhi and parked it at an isolated bay where it was surrounded by National Security Guard commandos, who eventually deflated the aircraft tyre and stormed it after three hours to find no hijackers.

Hussain stoutly denied persistent reports that the entire drama was a mock exercise intended to test all systems in the event of a real hijack.

He also said he had no information that NSG commandos had seized two knife-wielding passengers, trying to scotch rumours to that effect.

The 'hijack' kept Vajpayee awake till 4 in the morning, as he monitored the situation with ministers and officials.

Hussain promised an enquiry into the entire episode, but drew satisfaction from the fact that the system had been quickly activated as in the case of an emergency.

Despite the minister's categorical statement, a variety of rumours about the incident refused to die down.

Some passengers said it all began with a quarrel between two passengers one of whom sought to enter the cockpit.

He reportedly said that he was a government official.

This triggered the hijack alarm, according to that version.

It was a truly a bizarre situation as journalists at the Delhi airport and TV anchors calling passengers in the 'hijacked' aircraft on mobile phones to find out how the situation was inside only to be told everything was 'peaceful, calm and comfortable'.

Most passengers spoken to did not know of the 'hijack', as they had been told that they were being held because of a mechanical defect.

Meanwhile, Civil Aviation Secretary A H Jung added to the confusion when he said on television that there were two hijackers who spoke 'a little English'.

He did not know how they had hijacked the plane except that 'they have something in their hands, which was menacing enough to force a hijack'.

The bizarre drama was brought to an end when Advani talked to the pilot and the passengers were 'ordered' to be let off.

rediff.com, October 4, 2001 0355 IST
Passengers unaware of plane being hijacked

Josy Joseph in New Delhi

Even as the crisis management group of the civil aviation ministry is wrestling with the hijack of Alliance Air Flight CD-7444, passengers on board the plane do not even know that the plane has been hijacked.

A S Jain, a passenger on the plane who spoke to his brother at Delhi airport on his cell phone, said the announcement on board was that the plane had a technical fault and once it had been rectified, the passengers would be allowed to disembark.

Jain said he had noticed nothing untoward on the flight and there was no outward sign in the passenger area that the plane had been hijacked.

In sharp contrast, Civil Aviation Secretary A H Jung had told STAR News channel that the pilots had secured the cockpit and locked themselves in, implying that the hijackers were outside, in the passenger area.

rediff.com, October 4, 2001 1008 IST
Few takers for 'false alarm' theory

With the Kandahar hijacking episode still fresh in their memory, several passengers of the 'hijacked' Alliance Air flight expressed anguish and disgust over government attributing the incident to a 'false alarm'.

"This is not the way to test how the security apparatus functions. If a real hijack takes place, what will happen," said an angry K Jain, a passenger of CD-7444 flight from Bombay to Delhi, alighting from the aircraft after nearly a four-hour captivity.

While some passengers felt that the entire exercise was 'mock', a few others termed it as hundred per cent real 'hijack'.

"We were told by some commandos that we are safe now," said Darshan Singh, another passenger.

He added, "We were also conveyed that two of the hijackers had been nabbed."

However, chaos and confusion reigned supreme at the Delhi's Palam airport, which witnessed the four-hour long 'hijack' drama with a few anxious relatives having a verbal duel with senior police officials arguing about the black out of the news.

Even though Civil Aviation Minister Syed Shahnawaz Hussain said that the entire episode was a 'false alarm', an Alliance Air official, refusing to be identified, claimed, 'it was real hijack and the elite National Security Gaurd Commandos entered the aircraft through the landing gear into the cockpit and nabbed the two hiajckers'.

Another passenger Anil Kumar Bhandari said, "We suspected something was wrong as there was an abrupt halt to the aircraft after it landed at the Delhi Airport."

Narrating the incident, he said, "The entire lights inside the plane went off and we saw several vehicle with sirens atop approaching the aircraft. However, we were not sure as to what had happened."

Another passenger Anil Golcha, however, refused to believe that it was a mock exercise.

"It did not look like a mock exercise. The way they (commandos) beat up a passenger... was not a fake thing," he said.

rediff.com, October 4, 2001 1620 IST
'Hijack was fishy', says MP Chandrakant Khaire, Member of Parliament

I left my constituency, Aurangabad, in the morning and flew to Mumbai for a meeting with party leaders. And I was scheduled to leave for Delhi by the late evening flight.

When I boarded the flight, everything was normal. Around 12.50 am, the flight landed at Delhi airport, but was not moved from the landing area.

After about ten minutes, I looked out of the plane window and realised that the plane was not parked in the usual departure area. I then checked with a crew member, who told me there was a "technical snag".

I was not satisfied by the answer, since I could see that by then, the plane had been surrounded by police and fire brigade vehicles. Also, the runway lights had been turned off.

I, and a few other passengers, began asking the crew why the aircraft doors were not being opened and finally, around 2.20 am, they told us that there was a hijack problem.

Immediately, the atmosphere began to get tense. But fortunately, not for long -- at around 2.30 am, the pilot announced that this was merely an exercise to check anti-hijack preparedness.

I had meanwhile asked the crew for permission to use the mobile phone, but I was told that to use the phone might disrupt communications between the pilot and air traffic control. However, I wanted to inform my family of the situation, so I made a call anyway -- and that was when I learnt that TV news channels were reporting that the plane had been hijacked and taken to Lucknow, and that two hijackers were present on board the plane.

By then, every passenger was busy calling up relatives and friends, reassuring them, exchanging information.

My wife and my mother called me up, and they updated me about what the TV channels were saying. My wife also told me that lots of friends and relatives had come rushing to our home, and that everyone was very tense.

The crew, too, were looking tense, and depressed.

Around 3.05 am, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee called me on the mobile, asked me for an update of the situation, and assured me that he was personally looking into the situation. He told me to calm the fellow passengers down, and to tell them not to worry.

I in turn told him what I had learnt through conversations with Alliance Air officials in Mumbai, whom I had contacted on the phone. The airlines' director, Mukesh Bhatia,had told me that a call had come to the plane from Air Traffic Control, Ahmedabad, around 11.40 pm, saying that the flight was being hijacked to Lucknow. Bhatia told me, further, that our pilot had operated the hijack-alarm button, that is connected to all airports around the country.

In fact, Bhatia was surprised to know I was on the plane, because my name did not figure on the passenger list. It turned out that they had misspelt my name, the entry read Khare/C instead of Khaire/C.

As it turned out, what compounded the confusion was that by sheer coincidence, shortly after the pilot got the call from ATC, a passenger named Sharma wanted to get into the cockpit, and when the crew attempted to stop him, the passenger got into an argument.

The pilot, hearing raised voices outside, immediately locked the cockpit door.

It was around 3.15, more or less, when the crew warned us that unless we shut down our mobile phones, the hijackers on board would shoot us.

The plane was shrouded in silence, and in gloom. As long as people were in touch with their loved ones, things were okay, but once the phones were switched off, the mood changed. All of us believed that the hijackers were in the cockpit.

Around 4.15, the doors of the plane swung open and six men with guns barged in. I later learnt that they were National Security Guard commandos.

They rushed straight to seat number 12, where Sharma was sitting, held a gun to his head, and told the rest of us to stay calm, and disembark in orderly fashion.

I don't know what happened to Sharma, they probably detained him.

I alighted and went to the VIP lounge, where Special Commissioner Security (Delhi Police) R S Gupta told me that the police smelt something fishy in the incident, and added that he suspected Sharma was not an ordinary passenger.

What surprised me about the entire incident was that despite all this talk of putting sky marshalls on board all flights, there was no one of the kind on this one.

All that I had seen and heard convinces me that there was some conspiracy, some mischief at work. This was no mock exercise to test anti-hijacking measures, though eventually that is the colour that has been given to it.

I believe that if we have to prevent real tragedy some day, it is important for us to conduct a proper inquiry into the entire incident. It is vital to tighten security at airports and on flights, and it is very important, too, to find out who made that call from ATC Ahmedabad.

Shiv Sena Member of Parliament and former Maharashtra state minister for housing Chandrakant Khaire was on board the Alliance Air Mumbai-Delhi flight that was the centre of a false hijacking alarm in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday.

Khaire narrated his first person account to Basharat Peer.

JDW.com
Panic in New Delhi as ‘terrorist fever’ creates hoax hijacking

By Rahul Bedi, New Delhi

The apparent hijacking last night of an Indian airliner flying from Bombay to New Delhi, which led to four hours of panic and confusion in India and around the world, was a ‘false alarm’ caused by an anonymous phone call to the aviation authorities, officials said.

Indian Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussian said the "hijacking" of the late-night flight Boeing 737 flight to Delhi was a "hoax". Security officials said it was a security drill that went badly wrong as nobody in charge seemed to know the reality.

"It was a cruel joke played on the 46 passengers, the airline crew, the media and the world," said a security official called into ‘negotiate with the hijackers’. None of the senior officials seemed to know what was going on and treated it like a real hijack, he added.

Even Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was woken up around 1.00 am and told of the hijacking. India’s Cabinet Committee of Security was also summoned at 4.00 am to deal with the crisis, airports around the country were placed on high alert and the air force was scrambled.

Many relatives who had come to receive the passengers broke down when told of the hijacking. For them it evoked memories of an earlier, successful hijacking in which some passengers were killed. "What if anyone involved in this macabre joke had a weak heart condition and suffered a stroke?" asked a furious airline official, declining to be named. "Who would have been responsible for such a catastrophe then?" he added.

Till 4.00 am millions of tense Indians were sombrely told by Civil Aviation Secretary A Jung that Alliance Air flight CD 7444, on a late night flight, had been taken over by two men around midnight armed with "some weapons".

Police and National Security Guard commandos surrounded the aircraft, which was diverted to a corner of the airport and a fuel tanker positioned to it from leaving. Officials also said the pilots had summoned two flight engineers and asked for flight plans to fly to Lahore and Karachi in neighbouring Pakistan, further exacerbating tension in the region.

A similar ‘hijacking’ exercise to test the responses of the security agencies over a year ago had resulted in similar chaos, but an Indian Airlines Airbus hijacked to Afghanistan nearly two years ago was allowed proceed unchecked.

Dawn, Oct 05, 2001
New Delhi's response to 'hijack' worries friends

By Jawed Naqvi

NEW DELHI, Oct 4: By revealing some nervous responses to a clutch of horribly bloody as well as curiously imaginary terrorist threats to the country in recent days, India appears to have overstated its case as an oasis of calm and responsible demeanour in New Delhi's quest to be accepted as an equal member of the nuclear community, analysts and diplomats said on Thursday.

They said India's responses to recent devastating terrorist attacks in Kashmir coupled with a farcical hijack drama on Wednesday night, in which senior officials, including Home Minister Lal Krishan Advani, were forced to hurtle into a crisis management mode, were seen by the world at large with a degree of worry.

"There could be a serious provocation anywhere in the world tomorrow, as there was in New York last month," said one diplomat. "Does that mean you threaten any country, even a suspected country, with invasion? If so, you are in an obvious minority, particularly if that country is nuclear tipped".

A mindless suicide attack in Srinagar killed more than 25 people this week prompting calls by Jammu and Kashmri Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah to declare war on Pakistan. In a more worrying vein, India's junior foreign minister Omar Abdullah joined the chorus to punish Islamabad with hot pursuit, almost following his father.

Meanwhile, Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf has condemned the attack on the Srinagar legislative assembly. More worryingly, on the issue of the misreported hijack Pakistan television accused India of seeking to tarnish the image of Islamabad, saying in a late night broadcast that New Delhi had already accused Islamabad of commandeering the Alliance Airlines Boeing plane on its flight from Mumbai to Delhi. Even Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was so put off with the bad joke that he ordered a high-level probe the "hijack" of, replacing within hours another committee appointed by Civil Aviation Minister Syed Shahnawaz Hussain.

One news report said the prime minister has expressed "displeasure" over last night's episode that kept the nation on tenterhooks for four hours. A blow by blow account of the hijack by one newspaper would worry any country looking at the response to an equal emergency by a nuclear state. That response goes thus:

11.30 pm: Ahmedabad Air Traffic Control (ATC) receives an anonymous call that flight CD 7444 would be hijacked and the ATC informs the pilot Capt. Ashwin Bahal to lock the cockpit door and that the "hijackers" were in the passengers' cabin. ATC authorities at various airports, particularly in Lucknow and Delhi, are alerted about the "hijack". Emergency services get readied.

Oct 4, 12.52 am: The "hijacked" plane lands at Delhi. Runway lights are switched off and directed by the ATC Delhi to proceed to the isolation bay area.

1.15 am: News organizations come to know about the "hijack".

1.21 am: Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain confirms that the plane has been "hijacked".

1.45 am: TV channels go live for the coverage of the "hijack".

1.50 am: Crisis Management Group consisting of senior secretaries of the government and airline officials rush to the Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan.

2.15 am: Civil Aviation Secretary A H Jung says there are two hijackers on board who don't speak "good English". Jung says the cockpit of the aircraft is sterile and "hijackers" are in the passengers' cabin and that the cockpit door is locked. Aircraft also immobilized.

2.20 am: L K Advani reaches the Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan and presides over the Crisis Management Group meeting.

2.30 to 4 am: Confusion prevails. No official word but T.V networks call passengers inside the "hijacked" aircraft to ask about the situation. Many of the passengers say they are not aware of hijacking but have been told there is a "technical problem" with the aircraft.

4.00 am: Advani speaks to the pilot, Capt Bahal.

4.05 am: NSG commandos storm the cockpit of the aircraft and find no "hijackers".

4.10 am: Shahnawaz Hussain says the "hijack" was a false alarm and denies it was a "mock exercise".

4.12 am: Passengers disembark from aircraft.

The bizarre drama ends. The hijack of the Alliance Air Boeing 737 turns out to be a "false alarm".However, India's tough cop K.P.S. Gill gave a different view to Dawn. "We have messed up badly, I agree," he declared, "But it has been a good, useful mock hijack exercise too."

The News International, Friday Oct 05, 2001
Indian plane hijacking ends as farce, Vajpayee annoyed

NEW DELHI: The apparent hijack of a Boeing 737 of an Indian airliner turned out to be a farce on Thursday, making Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee annoyed over the bizarre events that led to a national security alert and senior ministers were dragged from their beds for crisis talks.

"The prime minister has expressed displeasure at the last night's incident," Civil Aviation Secretary AH Jung told reporters, hours after India stood down an alert over the supposed hijacking of a Bombay-New Delhi passenger flight.

Jung, a member of India's National Crisis Management Group, also said Vajpayee has given stern instructions that no more such incidents should occur. "He wants an inquiry why this has happened and wants to make sure that in the future it should not happen again," Jung said. The 76-year-old Vajpayee virtually stayed up the night for the four-hour drama that ended when commandos in New Delhi stormed the parked Alliance Air Boeing, which was carrying 46 passengers and six crew members, but realised there was no hijacking taking place.

Jung said the drama was triggered when state-run Indian Airlines received a telephone call around midnight on Wednesday that the Boeing would be seized in mid-flight. He said the alert super-charged the atmosphere in the plane as well as in India's aviation circles. Vajpayee was immediately put an alert about the event and an emergency meeting was called by top government ministers with Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani in attendance.

Jung said that after receiving the hijack warning, the Alliance Air captain had asked his cabin crew to be on the lookout for any suspicious movements among the passengers. It was at this stage that one of the passengers got up to use the toilet. "One passenger got up and started moving towards the front toilet and when the crew requested him to use the rear toilet, he became menacing and demanded to see the captain in the cockpit," Jung's ministry said in a statement. "When the request was denied, he went back and repeatedly kept shuffling on his seat. He was also constantly searching his handbag," it added.

The statement said the situation in the plane aroused the suspicions and the crew contacted the Delhi air traffic control saying there was indeed a hijacker on board. Thirty minutes later the plane landed at Delhi, but it was some hours before the truth dawned on everybody.

Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain was the first to announce the so-called hijacking. One even went on television saying that there were two hijackers "with something in their hand" who "didn't seem to be speaking proper English".

After landing safely at Delhi airport and taxing to an isolation bay, the captain and co-pilot had sat tight in their cockpit for nearly three hours, suspecting that hijackers were roaming around the passenger cabin behind them. Many of the 46 passengers, meanwhile, rode a roller-coaster of confusion and terror, eventually convincing themselves that hijackers must be in the cockpit. But the high drama ended in farce shortly before dawn: there were no hijackers.

"First when we landed, we were given drinks, so we thought it was not a hijack," said passenger Darshan Singh. "After around two hours, we realised it was a hijack, then we saw the commandos rushing to the aircraft, they told us don't worry, you are safe."

The event has sparked off a debate over existing aviation security arrangements in India. Jung said a probe has been ordered into the incident, which to some brought back memories of a 1988 mock hijacking staged by Indian commandos to hone up skills against aviation terrorism.

rediff.com, October 4, 2001 1430 IST
'Hijack drama aimed at discrediting Pak'

Pakistan on Thursday alleged that the "hijack" of an Alliance Air flight from Bombay to Delhi was a "drama" enacted by Indian intelligence agencies to discredit Islamabad.

Reporting on the incident, state-owned Pakistan Television said the "drama" proved right an alert sounded by Pakistani intelligence agencies on October 2 that India was chalking out a plan to enact a hijack in order to project Islamabad in bad light.

The television said intelligence reports circulated on October 2 by private news agency NNI and published in some of the newspapers on Wednesday cautioned that Indian intelligence agencies planned to hijack a plane and bring it to Pakistan to get Islamabad declared a terrorist state.

The Pakistan government had also issued orders not to permit the plane to enter the country's airspace in the event of an aircraft being commandeered there, it said.

Official GOP Response , Thursday October 4, 7:53 PM
Pakistan ridicules India hijacking "farce"

ISLAMABAD, Oct 4 (AFP) -

Pakistan heaped ridicule Thursday on rival India where commandos stormed an airliner after what turned out to be a false alarm that the plane had been hijacked.

"This was a total farce," foreign ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan said, adding that the initial reporting of the incident by the Indian broadcast media had sought to link Pakistan and Kashmiri separatists with the supposed hijacking.

"We have noted and the world must have noted the enthusiasm with which the Indian media tried to exploit this farce to malign Pakistan and malign the Kashmiri freedom movement," Khan said.

The Alliance Air plane, which was carrying 46 passengers and a six-member crew on a Bombay to Delhi flight, was surrounded by National Security Guard commandos on its arrival at New Delhi's Indira Gandhi airport shortly after midnight Wednesday.

The commandos later stormed the plane, only to realise there were no hijackers on board.

Indian Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain said the "false alarm" was triggered by a call to air traffic controllers.

Pakistan has been angered in recent days by India's efforts to have the US-led war on terrorism expanded to cover what New Delhi alleges is Pakistan's sponsorship of the long-running Muslim insurgency in Kashmir.

"It has brought out the animosity and hostility we so regularly experience on the part of the Indian media and many Indian officials," Khan said.

Pakistan denies the charges that it funds and trains Muslim militants operating in Indian Kashmir, but extends open moral and diplomatic support to what it describes as the Kashmiris just struggle for self-determination.

BBC, Thursday 04 October, 2001, 06:04 GMT 07:04 UK
India investigates false hijacking

Police were on alert at Delhi's international airport

The Indian Government has launched an investigation into the reported hijacking of a domestic flight, which turned out to be a false alarm. The government said the episode was caused by an anonymous phone call and confusion in the Alliance Air jet's cabin and cockpit, insisting that it was not a government-planned security drill.

Passengers could leave after the aircraft was stormed by commandos

"This was not a drill. Until 10 minutes ago we thought it was a hijack. It was only when the commandos entered the cockpit that even the pilots realised that it was a false alarm," said Indian Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain.

But some passengers, including an MP from the governing coalition, Chandrakant Kharge, said the pilots had announced the hijacking "was an exercise".

Comedy of errors

The passengers were able to leave the aircraft at Delhi's international airport early on Thursday, after commandos stormed it.

The Boeing 737 of Alliance Air, a domestic subsidiary of Indian Airlines, was on a flight from Bombay to Delhi when it was reported seized by two hijackers.

Mr Hussain said the pilot was told about the phone call and sealed his cockpit door. He then flew the plane to Delhi, skipping the scheduled stop in Ahmadabad.

If this was an exercise, it should not have lasted more than an hour. This has put the whole nation in a state of anxiety and concern

Passenger Chandrakant Kharge, MP

What followed was a comedy of errors, in which the pilots thought the hijackers were in the passenger cabin, while air traffic control and the passengers thought the hijackers were in the cockpit.

Other passengers were phoning their relatives from mobile phones, saying they knew nothing about a hijacking.

Senior Indian cabinet ministers, meanwhile, had convened at the airport for a crisis management meeting.

Police, commandos, ambulances and concerned relatives of passengers converged on the airport.

Security scare

Mr Hussain said the plane was carrying 46 passengers and six crew, revising earlier reports that there were 54 passengers on board.

The plane was taken to an isolated area at Indira Gandhi International Airport and surrounded by police and army after it landed at 0100 on Thursday (1930 GMT Wednesday).

As a precaution, the aircraft's tyres were deflated and a fuel tanker was parked in front of it so it could not take off.

During the crisis, intelligence officials were quoted as saying there were two hijackers on board who "spoke broken English".

It was also reported that these alleged hijackers had asked for flight plans to various areas in northern India and to the cities of Lahore and Karachi in Pakistan.

Pakistan reportedly closed all its airports in light of the reports.

Mr Hussain said a statement with more information would be made later on Thursday.

The world has been on a high security alert since the 11 September attacks in the US, when four planes in US domestic flights were hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center's twin towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.

India, which has expressed support for US President George W Bush's war on terrorism following the attacks, has been bracing for a retaliatory attack.

Paknews.com, updated on 2001-10-07 12:22:35
Indian agencies aborted hijacking drama on strong US advice: WKFM

ISLAMABAD, Oct 07 (PNS). Last minute ditching of Indian Intelligence's hijack of Indian airliner was the result of US strong advice to India not be too strident against Pakistan, Dr. Ayub Thakur, President of World Kashmir Freedom Movement in a statement said.

The well organised hijack of domestic airliner by the Indian Intelligence was aimed at putting the blame on 'Pakistan supported Kashmiri militants. Indian Intelligence, master -minding the hijack attempt, must have been told by the Indian government to abandon the attempt. Had it taken place, it surely would have provoked Washington to further distance itself from New Delhi.

Indian defence and foreign minister Jaswant Singh's attempt during his recent visits to Washington and London in trying to link the killing of 38 Kashmiris in front of State Assembly in Srinagar with 'Pakistan supported militants' got no response.

While leaders in both the capitals condemned the killings, they, however, refrained from blaming Pakistan for it, contrary to Mr. Jaswant Singh and the Indian government expectations. Besides, US President's declaration about a Palestine State has also scared Indian government leaders that a similar fate perhaps awaits Indian occupied Kashmir.

The entire hijack attempt was fraught with many ambiguities. It was said that there were two hijackers who were speaking broken English; they were armed with bombs; and among their destinations was said to be Lahore in Pakistan, a hint that hijackers had some connection with Pakistan.

Pakistan, as soon as the news of hijacking of the Indian airliner was broadcast stopped the entry of all aircraft coming from India. It may be mentioned that in 1971 Indian intelligence had also organised hijacking of an Indian plane, 'Ganga" whose passengers were mostly military personnel and which had landed in Lahore and later destroyed by fire at the hands of the Indian sponsored hijackers.

All the drama of his week's hijack in Indian was broadcast, over TV news, including foreign networks. When questioned what was the hijackers' demands, there was total silence from Indian government leaders who had assembled at a remote corner of the India Gandhi airport, along with military and paramilitary personnel.

Realising the extreme pressure facing their government, the Indian intelligence called off the hijack and it was announced that the hijack was a false alarm. When the false alarm announcement was not at all convincing, it was later claimed that the hijack was part of and exercise of the Indian Intelligence.


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