Why Was Dreaded Jaish-e-mohammed Terrorist Masood Azhar Freed In 1999? Nation Must Know, Former Special Chief Secretary Kbs Sidhu Tells Cabinet Secretary
Sep15,2026
| Jagrati Lahar Bureau | Chandigarh
Ex-Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, who handled two hijackings at Raja Sansi Airport,
Amritsar, in 1993, seeks disclosure of the IC-814 inquiry findings without apportioning
blame
Chandigarh, 15 September 2026
Nearly twenty-seven years after Indian Airlines flight IC-814 was allowed to take off from
Amritsar, the country has still not been told why, or what weighed with the Government when it
freed Jaish-e-Mohammed founder Masood Azhar a week later. KBS Sidhu, retired Special Chief
Secretary, Government of Punjab, said so on Tuesday, a day after Pakistan listed Azhar as a
fugitive and raised the bounty on him to PKR 70 lakh.
In a letter to Cabinet Secretary Dr. T.V. Somanathan, KBS Sidhu, a 1984-batch IAS officer of the
Punjab cadre, has asked that two sets of records be examined for declassification and made
public: the report of the inquiry ordered on 27 December 1999 into the aircraft’s departure from
Amritsar, and the record of the Crisis Management Group’s deliberations from 24 to 31
December 1999. Only what national security still requires should be withheld, he said, and
where full disclosure is not possible, the Government should place an authoritative account
before Parliament.
Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency has entered Azhar in its 2026 Red Book of most-wanted
terrorists and raised the reward for his arrest from PKR 50 lakh to PKR 70 lakh, weeks before
the October plenary of the Financial Action Task Force. “Pakistan is lying through its teeth,” KBS
Sidhu said. “But Azhar was once in an Indian jail, and we let him go.”
IC-814, flying from Kathmandu to Delhi, was hijacked on 24 December 1999 and landed at Raja
Sansi Airport, Amritsar. It stood there for about 47 minutes before leaving without clearance for
Lahore, Dubai and finally Taliban-held Kandahar. On 31 December 1999 the Government
released Azhar, held in Kot Balwal jail in Jammu, along with Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and
Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, in exchange for the hostages.
KBS Sidhu served as Deputy Commissioner, Amritsar, from May 1992 to August 1996, when the
district included present-day Tarn Taran. In 1993 he dealt with two hijacked Indian Airlines
aircraft at the same airport within a month. On 27 March 1993 the hijacker of IC-439
surrendered after negotiations. On 24–25 April 1993 NSG commandos stormed IC-427 and
killed the hijacker, and no passenger or crew member was harmed. “In both cases we worked to
one rule, that a hijacked aircraft does not take off,” he said. He had no role in the events of 1999.
The nation, he said, paid for the 1999 release over the next two decades. Azhar founded the
Jaish-e-Mohammed in 2000. India has blamed the group, with the Lashkar-e-Taiba, for the
attack on Parliament in 2001, and holds it responsible for the attacks at Pathankot and Uri in
2016 and at Pulwama in 2019. Omar Sheikh went on to the murder of the American journalist
Daniel Pearl. “With hindsight, India freed three predators that week, and the country has been
paying for them ever since,” KBS Sidhu said.
He was not seeking to apportion blame or fix responsibility on any individual, he said. “Many of
those who took the decisions of that week are no longer with us, and I look back with a hindsight
they did not have. But citizens are entitled to know what weighed at each point: why the aircraft
was not immobilised at Amritsar, what assessment of risk guided the Crisis Management Group,
and what led to the release of the three prisoners.”
KBS Sidhu pointed out that records of events more than twenty years old should ordinarily be
open to citizens, subject to the needs of security. An honest account of 1999, he said, would also
serve officers working under the 2005 anti-hijacking policy and the Anti-Hijacking Act of 2016.
He has offered his experience of the 1993 hijackings for the training of district, police and airport
officers.
His article on the subject, “Wanted by Pakistan in 2026, Freed by India in 1999: Masood Azhar,
Founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed”, appears in The KBS Chronicle at
https://kbssidhu.substack.com/p/wanted-by-pakistan-in-2026-freed.
About KBS Sidhu: A 1984-batch IAS officer of the Punjab cadre, KBS Sidhu served as Deputy
Commissioner, Amritsar (1992–96), and superannuated as Special Chief Secretary, Government of
Punjab, in July 2021. He is Founder-Editor of The KBS Chronicle.
Contact: kbs.sidhu@gmail.com
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