Indian Airlines flight IC-814 hijackers were backed by Pakistan's ISI: Ajit Doval

IC-814 hijackers were actively supported by Pakistan's spy agency ISI, according Ajit Doval.

File photo

Delhi: Indian Airlines flight IC-814 hijackers were actively supported by Pakistan's spy agency ISI, according to national security adviser Ajit Doval.

The Times of India reported Doval as saying that if the Taliban hijackers did not have ISI support, India could have resolved the crisis. 

He was one of the negotiators when the Kathmandu-Delhi flight, with 180 passengers and crew on board, was taken over by five hijackers soon after take-off on December 24, 1999.

The crisis ended after terrorists Maulana Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Zargar were released.

The NSA has made these comments in 'Defeat is an Orphan: How Pakistan lost the Great South Asian War' - a new book by Myra Macdonald.

There were a lot of Taliban on the tarmac with their weapons. Two ISI men were on the tarmac and others soon joined them. One was a lieutenant colonel and the other a major - Doval was quoted as saying.

"We were getting very good intelligence about all that was happening," he further says in the book, adding, "If these people were not getting active ISI support in Kandahar, we could have got the hijacking vacated. The ISI had removed all the pressure we were trying to put on the hijackers... Normally that is not the way hijackers talk. Normally the biggest fear is how to get out."

Doval describes the three released men as "ISI-sponsored terrorists" in the book written by Macdonald.