’IC814’ web series content row: IB Ministry summons Netflix content head. All you need to know about the controversy

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Monday summoned the content Head of OTT platform Netflix tomorrow, September 3, over the controversy surrounding the ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’ web series after the portrayal of hijackers in the series sparked outrage on social media.

The Broadcasting Ministry's summons comes after a section of social media users accused the makers of the web series of deliberately changing the names of the hijackers to ‘Bhola’ and ‘Shankar’.

‘IC 814’ is a web series based on real events, the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight by Pakistan-based terror outfit Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.

Directed by Anubhav Sinha, the series was inspired by the book Flight Into Fear: The Captain's Story, authored by Devi Sharan, the captain of the flight and journalist Srinjoy Chowdhury.

IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack

The web series is based on the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814 on December 24, 1999. The flight, carrying 191 passengers, took off from Kathmandu, Nepal, en route to Delhi. Shortly after takeoff, five hijackers, disguised as passengers, seized control of the aircraft. The plane subsequently made multiple stops in Amritsar, Lahore, and Dubai before being diverted to Kandahar, Afghanistan.

During the 1999 hijacking, then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was compelled to release three notorious terrorists—Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar—from Indian prisons to secure the hostages' release. Reports indicate that the Taliban assisted the hijackers and the freed terrorists in reaching Pakistan.

A statement from the Union Home Ministry dated January 6, 2000, identified the hijackers as Ibrahim Athar, Shahid Akhtar Sayed, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim, and Shakir.

What is the controversy about? 

BJP IT Cell chief Amit Malviya criticised the depiction, stating that the hijackers were notorious terrorists who used aliases to conceal their Muslim identities.

“Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha has legitimised their criminal intent by highlighting their non-Muslim names. In the future, people might believe that Hindus were behind the IC-814 hijacking [sic],” Malviya posted on X. 

Malviya accused the Left of attempting to whitewash the actions of Pakistani terrorists and suggested that cinema, used aggressively by Communists since the 1970s, is being leveraged to shift blame and undermine India's security, as reported by ANI.

Reacting to the post, Kangana Ranaut on Monday said there is freedom for communists or leftists for anti-national expressions, but OTT platforms do not let nationalist express their views.

She shared on X, “Law of the land is that one can show unimaginable amount of violence and nudity on OTT platforms without any consequence or censorship, one can even distort real-life events to suit their politically motivated sinister motives, there is all the freedom for communists or leftists across the world for such anti-national expressions but as a nationalist no OTT platform allows us to make films that revolve around the integrity and unity of Bharat, it seems censorship is only for some of us who don’t want tukde of this nation and make films on historic facts. It’s hugely demotivating and unjust [sic].”