NEW DELHI: Police in Indian Kashmir have arrested a militant suspected of involvement in the 1999 hijacking of an Indian passenger plane that was flown to Afghanistan, a government spokesman told AFP Thursday.
Mehrajuddin Dand, alias Javed was arrested by police in Kashmir’s Kishtwar district on Thursday morning, ending a near 13-year-old pursuit of the militants behind the high-profile hijacking.
The New Delhi-bound Indian Airlines aircraft, flight IC-814, with 157 people on board was seized and flown to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar by five men after it took off from the Nepalese capital Kathmandu on December 24, 1999.
Kuldeep Singh Dhatwalia, a spokesman for the home ministry told AFP that Dand was arrested in the morning and that the “initial investigation reveals that he provided logistical support to the hijackers”.
Media reports said that Dand had provided assistance and fake travel documents to the five hijackers, none of whom were apprehended by police after the incident.
Dhatwalia claimed Dand moved across the border between India and Pakistan for years until police nabbed him.
“He is being questioned in a number of other cases as well, but we cannot reveal those details yet,” he said.
The 1999 hijack crisis ended after India’s then Hindu nationalist government swapped three Islamist militants imprisoned in New Delhi for the captives.
Five actual hijackers — Ibrahim Athar, who is a brother of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, S. A. Sayed alias Doctor, Z. I. Mistri alias Bhola and R. G. Verma alias Shakir — commandeered the plane to Kandahar after it was refused landing request in Pakistan.
Following tense negotiations with Indian officials the hijackers successfully got Azhar and two other terrorists released from Indian jails in exchange for the passengers and the plane. Indian foreign minister at the time Jaswant Singh and senior officials escorted the freed inmates to Kandahar where the exchange took place.
The prisoners released by India included Mushtaq Zargar, chief of Al-Umar Mujahideen militant outfit.
The third free militant, Ahmed Saeed Sheikh, also known as Sheikh Omar, was later involved in the kidnap and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan — for which he was arrested and sentenced to death.
