The Indian Airlines Flight 814 also known as IC 814, was an Indian Airlines Airbus A300 routing from Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, to Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, India. On 24th December 1999, the flight got hijacked by 5 masked men.
The flight was piloted by Captain Devi Sharan, first officer Rajinder Kumar and flight engineer Anil Kumar Jaggia. At 17:30 IST, the flight was hijacked and the hijackers ordered to fly the aircraft in different locations including Amritsar, Lahore, and across the Persian Gulf to Dubai.
Rupin Katyal, a 25-year-old man was brutally stabbed by Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim on 25th December 1999. Rupin along with his newlywed wife Rachana Katyal was returning back to Delhi after their honeymoon in Kathmandu, Nepal. He was sitting in the business class. He was then stabbed to death for disobeying the command of one of hijackers.
After getting slashed by the hijacker, he bled slowly and painfully to death. He was stabbed in the chest. Zahoor used a sharp instrument and stabbed Rupin Katyal to death. Rupin’s body was retrieved from the hijacked flight in the UAE. Many crew members and passengers were injured during the hijack period. The conditions inside the flight were terrifying, with all the passenger weeping, vomiting and fainting inside the hijacked aircraft.
The goal of the hijackers was to secure the release of Islamist terrorists held in the prisons of India. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Masood Azhar, and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar were the three terrorists that the hijackers demanded to get released from India. This long-hijacked journey came to an end on 31st December 1999, after India agreed to free the three terrorists as per the demand of the hijackers.
The hijacked aircraft finally landed at Kandahar airport, Afghanistan. The Kandahar airport was under the control of Taliban. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval said that if the hijackers did not have the support of ISI, India would have resolved the crisis.
However, Rupin Katyal got justice after 23 years as Hijacker Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim was shot dead in Karachi, Pakistan on 1st March 2022 by an unknown man. The gunman who killed Ibrahim is still not identified.