'To my dearest sister:’ Chandigarh woman holds onto shawl IC 814 hijacker 'Burger' gifted her

The IC 814 flight was hijacked by members of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen terror group who demanded the body of Sajjad Afghani from Indian authorities

A woman from Chandigarh, who was on the hijacked IC 814 flight, still holds onto hijacker Burger’s birthday gift to her.

Pooja Kataria (47) was returning to India with her newly-wed husband from their honeymoon in Kathmandu on December 24, 1999. The flight was hijacked by members of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen terror group who demanded the body of Sajjad Afghani from Indian authorities.

Describing how initially the passengers did not realise that the aircraft was hijacked, Kataria told Indian Express, “December 27 was my birthday. On December 26, when one of the terrorists saw that people were getting panicky, he tried to calm them. I then requested him: ‘It’s my birthday tomorrow. Please allow us to go home. We are innocent.’ He then pulled out the shawl he was wearing and said, ‘have it, your birthday gift’.”

Kataria, who was one among the 189 hostages, said before leaving, the hijackers announced their demands were met. “He (Burger) came to me and said he would write on the shawl he gifted though I was scared. He wrote: ‘To my dearest sister and her handsome husband… Burger 30/12/99’. People are mocking me for this, but I have kept that shawl as a symbol of our second birth,” said Kataria.

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Umashankar Singh (@umashankarsingh) September 4, 2024

According to her, the hijackers addressed each other using the code names Chief, Doctor, Burger, Bhola and Shankar.  Kataria's comment follows a heated row over the Netflix series “IC-814 Kandahar Hijack” using the two terrorists' code names “Bhola” and “Shankar”.  The OTT giant has been accused of   misrepresenting the identities of the terrorists - named by the Home Ministry in 2000 as Ibrahim Athar, Shahid Akhtar Sayed, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim and Shakir.

"I don't know why people are making a controversy... This is based on a real event and the names were also factual," Kataria told ANI.

She told Indian Express that after 1999, she did not take a flight for the next one decade due to fear. “When you don’t know whether you will return to your loved ones or not, it’s the most dreadful feeling. When we reached home safely, I couldn’t forget those seven harrowing days for years. It’s an incident I still tell my children about. Even when they take a flight, I remind them to always be careful,” she said.

Meanwhile, after the meeting with the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting officials, Netflix said that it would update the series’ opening disclaimer to include the terrorists’ real names along with their code names.