Air India pilot who flew hijacked flight to Pak dies: Know about India's first episode of terror in sky

Capt MK Kachru, pilot of the Indian Airlines plane that was hijacked to Pakistan in January 1971, died in Faridabad on Saturday after prolonged illness, his family said.

He was 93, they said.

The 1971 episode was the first time an Indian plane was hijacked and forced to land on foreign soil. 

An IANS report details how the two Kashmiri teens used toy gun and wooden grenade to hijack the plane.

Hashim Qureshi, who was then 16, told IANS in 2012 how he met a BSF officer at Srinagar's Lal Chowk and asked his help to enter Pakistan in return of some information.

‘I was asked by the BSF to keep a watch at the Srinagar airport. An advertisement appeared in a newspaper about the sale of a look-real pistol which could be used to scare away thieves. I ordered one by post. I fabricated a wooden hand grenade and painted it with metallic colour,’ Qureshi was quoted as saying. 

He claimed that Maqbool Bhat, the JKLF founder, was the inspiration behind the hijacking.

On the ill-fated day, Capt Kachru was flying the Indian Airlines plane named Ganga, carrying 26 passengers and a crew of four, from Srinagar to Jammu when two Kashmiris, including Qureshi hijacked it and forced him to fly to Lahore.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, then foreign minister of Pakistan, turned up at the airport and hailed the hijackers, who had demanded the release of some prisoners from Indian jails.

The demand was refused by India.

Though the passengers and the crew were transported back to India by land route via Amritsar, the plane was set on fire.

Qureshi claimed that Lahore Police wanted to set ablaze the plane for maximum media attention. It is said that an army officer came with fuel cannister and told hijackers to set the plane on fire.

India had hit back by banning overflights of Pakistani aircraft in Indian airspace.