After thirteen years of the Kandahar IC 814 hijack, Mehrajuddin Dand, who is suspected to have provided logistical support for it has been arrested in Kishtwar in Jammu and Kashmir. The police said that the militant is a major catch and has been operating for the past 20 years.
Not many details of the arrest have been made available as the police is double checking that the man they have arrested is actually Dand. He goes by the alias Javed and is also alleged to have been involved in many of the blasts in the country.
The police also informed that Dand has been married to a Hindu girl and has been living in Nepal for many years now. The police has also claimed that Dand had provided fake travel documents to five Pakistani men who hijacked the Indian Airlines flight IC 814 on December 24, 1999.
The flight mostly had Indians aboard and had taken off from Nepal. As soon as the flight entered the Indian space the gunmen hijacked the flight and took it to Kandahar in Afganistan after fueling stops at Amritsar and Lahore in Pakistan. They had also stopped at Dubai where they had freed some of the passengers. During the seven day standoff, the hijackers had killed one man while the Indian government released three notorious terrorist leaders for the safe return of the rest of the passengers.
