In a significant development, the Netflix Content Head was on Monday summoned by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (IB Ministry), over the controversy related to the platform's 'IC814' web series, news agency ANI reported citing sources. The development comes after the social media users on X (formerly known as Twitter), alleged that the series was inaccurate.
Social media users on September 1 alleged that Netflix series “IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack” was “hiding the real identities of the terrorists involved in the 1999 incident”, PTI reported. In response to the allegations, show casting director Mukesh Chhabra on the same day claimed that the perpetrators used nicknames for each other and proper research was done for the show.
'IC 814' web series: All you need to know
Directed by Anubhav Sinha, 'IC 814' is a web series based on the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight by Pakistan-based terror outfit Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
Notably, the Indian aircraft was hijacked by five terrorists on December 24, 1999, just 40 minutes after it took off from Kathmandu. The web series started streaming on Netflix from August 29.
On social media, the X users started using hashtags #BoycottNetflix, #BoycottBollywood and #IC814, and shared posts saying that the makers had changed the names of the hijackers to 'Shankar' and 'Bhola' to allegedly protect the terrorists who belonged to a certain community.
What happened in Kandahar Hijack incident
it should be noted that five terrorists such as Ibrahim Athar, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Zahoor Ibrahim, Shahid Akhter and Sayed Shakir had hijacked the IC-814 aircraft during its flight from Kathmandu in Nepal to the national capital Delhi on December 24, 1999. At least 154 onboard passengers and crew were held hostage for eight days during the incident.
Soon after the hijack, the plane made several landings at Amritsar, Lahore and Dubai, before being taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan.
Here’s what political leaders said
Reacting to the web series, BJP leader Amit Malviya slammed the makers of the webseries for using these names and said "The hijackers of IC-814 were dreaded terrorists, who acquired aliases to hide their Muslim identities. Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha, legitimised their criminal intent, by furthering their non-Muslim names. Result? Decades later, people will think Hindus hijacked IC-814," he said in a post on X.
He added that "Left's agenda to whitewash the crimes of Pakistani terrorists, all Muslims, served. This is the power of cinema, which the Communists have been using aggressively, since the 70s. Perhaps even earlier.”
