With 189 people on board, at one point, passengers heard: "Good evening, this is your captain. I regret to inform you that this plane has been hijacked". The Indian Netflix series, based on the book Flight Into Fear by Captain Devi Sharan and Srinjoy Chowdhury, shows not only what happened on board but also the negotiations and diplomatic procedures aimed at freeing the hostages. The series, depicting the seven-day tragedy, which has been available since August 28, has been criticized by some viewers due to how the hijackers were portrayed.
Netflix's "IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack" Criticized in India. Netflix Responds
Twenty-seven years after making the series Sea Hawks, Netflix and Matchbox Shots made me an offer I couldn't refuse - to tell the story of Flight IC 814
- said director Anubhav Sinha. He revealed that the creators didn’t want to rely solely on information from the internet and the book.
We met with officials involved in the rescue mission from Delhi, and passengers and crew shared their stories about what happened inside the plane
- he explained. They also incorporated some fictional elements and changes, as it’s not a documentary. However, the changes in the names of the hijackers upset viewers in India.
On December 24, 1999, a plane flying from Kathmandu to Delhi (with the majority of passengers being Indian citizens) was hijacked by five Pakistanis from the armed group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. However, in the Netflix production, the hijackers were given typical Indian names. Many viewers felt this suggested that the terrorists were not Islamic jihadists but rather Hindus. Protests came from politicians, including members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Netflix responded, though part of the justification was on the creators’ side.
For viewers unfamiliar with the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814, the concerns have been addressed, and the series now includes the real codenames of the hijackers
- said Monika Shergill, Vice President of Content at Netflix India, in a statement. But why did they initially have the right to portray the terrorists as they did? The filmmakers had decided to use the pseudonyms the criminals used during the hijacking. An official statement from the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs in 2000 and testimony from hostage Kollattu Ravikumar confirmed the use of such nicknames.
Netflix Has Previously Removed Scenes or Entire Episodes
This isn't the first time Netflix has made changes to its productions due to, among other things, political reactions. In 2019, then-Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, along with the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) and many commentators, pointed out a misleading map showing German concentration camps in the documentary series "The Devil Next Door". Morawiecki wrote to Netflix’s CEO about the issue and received a response.
More recently, Netflix decided not to air an episode of Mad Men altogether, deeming it no longer aligned with modern standards. The issue was with a scene where a character wears blackface. Netflix’s decision met with mixed reactions. Many pointed out that AMC, the original broadcaster of the show, had also faced criticism for those scenes but explained that the characters are fictional, and Mad Men was portraying the reality of the 1960s without idealizing or whitewashing it.
