The recently released crime thriller drama mini-series IC 814: The Hijack of Kandahar has produced a lot of noise on the web regarding its storytelling and suppression of facts.
The mini-series, directed by Sinha himself, is based on the hijacking incident of Indian Airlines Flight 814.
It was hijacked by six terrorists-Ibrahim Athar, Shahid Akhtar Sayed, Sunny, Ahmad Qazi, Zahoor Mistry, and Shakir-of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen terrorist outfit-over their demands for the release of Pakistani terrorists held in prison in India such as Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Masood Azhar, and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar.
The streaming series is getting slammed on social media, however, with several alleging that it is whitewashing the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, for humanising the cruel terrorists; many of these posts call out the content as misleading. Several users also claimed that the religion of the hijackers was deliberately changed by the makers.
As one Internet user put wrote on X, "Kandahar flight hijackers names: Ibrahim Athar, Shahid Akhtar, Sunny Ahmed, Zahoor Mistry and Shakir. Anubhav Sinha hijacker web series 'IC 814' depicted as Bhola Shankar. Here's whitewashing done cinematically."
Another wrote: "The hijackers of IC814 were lethal, cruel -- to even attempt to show some of them as human in the Netflix series is unfair."
A third wrote, "I noticed that too and was extremely surprised. Not a cool thing to do. I wonder how the @NetflixIndia team can be so reckless to let this happen."
However, as per the Ministry of External Affairs report dated January 2000, Chief, Doctor, Burger, Bhola and Shankar, were the names by which the hijackers invariably addressed one another.
Journalist-writer-lyricist Neelesh Misra, who penned the book 173 Hours in Captivity: The Hijacking of IC814, too took to his X and wrote: "Shankar, Bhola, Burger, Doctor aur Chief, the brother of then-jailed Masood Azhar himself. All the hijackers assumed false names. That is how they referred to each other and how the passengers referred to them throughout the hijacking. Regards, the author of the first book on the IC-814 hijacking."
The Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijacking and hostage crisis lasted a whole seven days, finally ending after the Indian administration buckled under the pressure and set free the three terrorists, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Masood Azhar, and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar.
Read also| Proud Parents Ankita Lokhande and Vicky Jain Welcome Their 'Little Princess' Mau
Read also| We backed Amitabh Bachchan, he gave us a great performance, says Javed Akhtar
