‘Couldn’t come home to care for my baby’: S. Jaishankar recounts IC814 horror, says father on same flight

Similar to how his profession demands, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said how he had a unique perspective of both sides while handling the 1999 Kandahar hijack. The minister revealed that his father K. Subrahmanyam was also on the same flight.

The External Affairs Minister was addressing a community event in Geneva about the recently released television series on the hijacking of IC-814 in 1999. Jaishankar's interesting response came while responding to a question about the series, which had portrayed the bureaucracy and the government in “poor light”, according to the questioner.

S. Jaishankar reflected on the harrowing 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC 814, on which director Anubhav Sinha has based the Netflix series “IC 814 - The Kandahar Hijack.”

Jaishankar shared a personal account of his experience during the crisis, revealing that he discovered his father was aboard the hijacked flight four hours into the ordeal. At the time, Jaishankar was a young IFS officer and part of the team that was responding to the hijacking.

He described the emotional turmoil of balancing his official duties with personal concerns, noting, "My wife was working and away, so I could not be with my son, who was just a few months old. I had to call my mother to explain that I couldn’t come home to care for my baby due to the hijacking situation."

Jaishankar, who has served as India's foreign minister since 2019, recounted how he was uniquely positioned to understand both the governmental and personal dimensions of the crisis. "I was involved in managing the hijacking response while also being a family member advocating for government action," he said, reflecting on his dual role during the crisis.

Who was K. Subrahmanyam

On August 24, 1984, Indian Airlines Flight 421 was hijacked by seven members of the banned All India Sikh Students Federation. Minister S. Jaishankar's father Krishnaswamy Subrahmanyam, who is regarded as one of the pioneers of realpolitik in India, was also on the flight.

According to a report by India Today, the hijackers had decided to kill K. Subrahmanyam first, as they had decided to kill one passenger every half an hour.

However, following diplomatic talks, all the passengers were rescued in the hijacking crisis that lasted for 36 hours.

In the years that followed, K Subrahmanyam was instrumental in shaping India's nuclear policy and security strategy. As the Convenor of India's inaugural National Security Council Advisory Board, he crafted the nation's nuclear doctrine, which underscored a "no first use" policy and a second-strike capability.

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