Actor Vijay Varma recently interviewed Captain Devi Sharan, the pilot of the hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814, whom he portrayed in the Netflix series IC-814.
In the interview, Captain Sharan recounted his harrowing experience with the hijackers, describing one as a relatively lenient intermediary and another as particularly brutal. Talking about the most dangerous one, he identified him as the one codenamed ‘Shankar’. “Most dangerous was a hijacker named Shankar. He always looked like he would kill anytime,” Sharan said.
He also disclosed that, after a week of intense negotiations, one of the hijackers broke down and hugged him. In the series, the hijackers are referred to by their aliases: Chief, Doctor, Burger, Bhola, and Shankar.
Captain Sharan said that Burger was functioning as PR and that he shared a certain wavelength with him. “For instance, if one hijacker hit a passenger then he would come in between and would make both the hijacker and the passenger understand…Like if I had to communicate something, I would approach him and he was always ready,” he added.
Sharan also addressed the speculations that the hijackers became more lenient over time. He explained that the hijackers didn’t achieve all of their demands during the negotiations. He shared that the negotiators worked tirelessly for 3-4 days, which seemed to affect the hijackers. On the 5th or 6th day, the chief hijacker broke down and hugged him. It later became known that the prisoner they had demanded to be released from an Indian jail was the chief hijacker’s brother.