First Hijack on Foreign Soil: When 47 Terrorists Seized Air India Flight in Seychelles

As Netflix continues streaming the multi-starrer mini-series ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’, based on the Indian Airlines flight hijacking on December 1999, a similar event occurred 43 years ago, in November 1981, at Mahe, an island in Seychelles, where an Air India flight had landed for refueling.

The Air India flight AI-224, had taken off from Lusaka Airport in Zambia and was destined for Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai. The aircraft had 65 passengers and 13 cabin crew members on board.

The total journey, by the Boeing 707 aircraft, was for about 21 hours. Since the fuel capacity of the aircraft was limited, it had to stop at Seychelles International Airport at Mahe for refueling after flying for about 10 hours.

During this, about 47 terrorists from Africa’s Swaziland, barged into the Seychelles International Airport. They were trying to take over the airport. Amidst an encounter with the security forces at the airport, all of them entered the Air India aircraft.

The terrorists were equipped with ultra-modern automatic weapons and hand grenades. They took all the passengers and crew members hostage and hijacked the plane. Their leader, Peter Daffy kept forcing Captain Umesh Saxena to take off and fly the aircraft to Durban in South Africa. However, the captain confronted the hijackers and refused to fly.

To free the passengers and the cabin crew from the clutches of the hijackers, negotiations started between the local agencies and the hijackers. This lasted for about six hours following which the hijackers agreed to release the hostages and surrender.

The hijackers were then arrested and a case was filed. After their case was heard, they were sentenced to imprisonment for different terms ranging from one year to 20 years.

This was the second Indian plane to be hijacked in the 1980s. Earlier, some separatists had hijacked an Indian Airlines plane flying from Amritsar to Delhi. This plane landed at Lahore. The Special Service Group (SSG) of Pakistan Army conducted an operation and saved all the passengers and crew members from the clutches of the hijackers.

In the 1970’s, a total of thee planes were hijacked. However, this incident at Seychelles was the first in the 1970s and 1980s, in which an Indian aircraft was hijacked on foreign soil.