Netflix India content chief Monika Shergill met with officials from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Tuesday after being summoned by the government due to a controversy surrounding the depiction of hijackers in the streaming platform’s series ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’.
The ministry summoned Shergill to explain the allegedly contentious aspects of the web series, according to government sources.
The series, based on the real-life hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight IC 814 in 1999, depicts the harrowing experiences of passengers and crew members, as well as the challenges faced by the Indian government as the flight was diverted to multiple locations before ending up in Taliban-controlled Kandahar, Afghanistan.
The hijackers in the series are depicted with codenames such as Chief, Doctor, Burger, Bhola, and Shankar. However, the use of the names Bhola and Shankar has triggered controversy. Critics, including BJP leaders, have targeted the series’ director, Anubhav Sinha, arguing that the show should have highlighted that the hijackers were five Muslim terrorists, two of whom used Hindu aliases.
BJP leader Amit Malviya criticized the series, accusing Sinha of legitimizing the criminal intent of the hijackers by using non-Muslim names.
“The hijackers of IC-814 were dreaded terrorists who acquired aliases to hide their Muslim identities. Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha legitimized their criminal intent by furthering their non-Muslim names. The result? Decades later, people will think Hindus hijacked IC-814,” Malviya said in a post on X.
BJP leader Rajeev Chandrasekhar expressed satisfaction that the I&B ministry had taken notice of the issue.
The series is adapted from the book Flight into Fear: The Captain’s Story, written by journalist Srinjoy Chowdhury and Devi Sharan, the captain of the hijacked flight. It stars Vijay Varma, Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Manoj Pahwa, Arvind Swami, Anupam Tripathi, Dia Mirza, Patralekhaa, Amrita Puri, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, and Kumud Mishra.
