How India exchanged terrorists for hostages inside flight IC-814

In his forthcoming book The Chief Minister and the Spy: An Unlikely Friendship, former R&AW chief AS Dulat tells how he persuaded then J&K CM Farooq Abdullah to release Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh and Mustaq Ahmed Zargar

- PTI

Once Ajit Doval—then an excellent negotiator and IB man—and the other negotiators had whittled the hijackers' demands down to three terrorists, Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh, and Mushtaq Zargar, the Indian government had to take a call. I was not in the IB in 1999, having joined as chief of the R&AW. But I remember it being a time of intense pressure. The media added to the cauldron-like atmosphere, flashing visuals of protesting families and crying relatives outside 7 Race Course Road (Lok Kalyan Marg).

India's hands were tied. Once the plane took off from Amritsar, we lost any advantage we might previously have possessed. Reluctantly, the green light was given to release the three terrorists—until it was suddenly realized that this could hardly happen without Farooq's agreement. It was a measure of how much Delhi has relied on the unlikely friendship between the chief minister and the spy that I was picked to do the dirty work in this case. Brajesh Mishra asked me to go to Jammu without wasting any time. The foreign minister, Jaswant Singh, called Farooq and formally let him know that the R&AW chief was being sent to him. When I rang him, Farooq seemed to shrug over the telephone, "You might as well come and stay with me."

A S Dulat's revelation in his book The Chief Minister and The Spy, claiming that National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah "privately backed" the Article 370 abrogation in 2019 has stirred the hornet's nest.

The claim itself—that former J&K CM and National Conference President Dr Farooq Abdullah had secretly supported the abrogation of Article 370—is sure to dent the Sheikh legacy in J&K. Kashmiris have considered the abrogation of Article 370 as an assault on their identity and continuously demand the restoration of the special status of the state besides restoration of statehood.