'Row over IC 814 series unnecessary'

FORMER Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) chief -A S Dulat tells Preetha Nair about the recent controversy over Netflix series 'IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack' and why he thinks it is not a diplomatic failure of the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.

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Excerpts: You have admitted that it was a mistake to allow the hijacked IC-814 flight to leave Amritsar.

I said it was a "goof up". But after watching the scenes of what the passengers went through, I feel that it's just as well that nothing happened in Amritsar. We don't know how many people would have been killed. The Punjab DGP also said that there would be killings if they had stormed the plane and that they wanted to avoid bloodshed.