Kandahar hijacker puts blame on Indian government

Patiala June 14 (UNI) Yusuf Nepali, one of the prime accused in the case related to the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Kandhar on December 24, 1999, today claimed that ''the hijacking had been planned by the Indian government to get rid of top Harkat-ul-Mujahideen leaders including Maulana Masood Azhar''.

Disposing off in the anti-hijacking court of special designated judge Inderjit Singh Walia here, Nepali told the court that the Centre was finding it hard to curtail the terrorist activities of Maulana Masood Azhar and his two accomplices Umar Shaikh and Mohamad Zargar. He said that the three terrorists despite being shifted to the Tihar jail from a jail in Jammu and Kashmir, were continuing with their terrorist activities and so the government wanted to get rid of them.

Going on record for the first time ever since the initiation of the trial proceedings, Yusuf Nepali told the court that the hijacking of IA flight-IC-814-was an attempt by the Indian government to get rid of the leaders of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. He said that the government decided that in case the three terrorists were let off, they could then be killed in an encounter and so they were freed from prison but later exchanged for passengers of the hijacked aircraft at Kandahar.

He said that the whole hijacking was a drama' fabricated by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Union Home Minister Lal Krishan Advani and Union Minister for External Affairs Jaswant Singh. Nepali said that the government of India wanted to eliminate the terrorists and also defame Pakistan in the international community.

In his disposition, Nepali pleading innocence said he had been falsely involved in the hijacking case. He said that his co-accused Dalip Kumar Bhujel could have also been a victim of the same 'drama'. He contended that US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had questioned him twice, but not even once did the FBI seek a copy of challan filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the court. He said that even the Nepal government had not proceeded with the investigations in the hijacking case that was registered in Kathmandu.

Defence counsel of Yusuf Nepali, Mr H V Rai said that his client had pleaded before the court that neither the prosecution nor the UNO had ever questioned any officer of the Indian External Affairs ministry in relation to the Kandahar hijacking. Mr Rai said that statements of the rescue crew or any witness from the governments of Dubai or Afghanistan or Pakistan had never been recorded and this had been told to the court by his client.

Yusuf Nepali, a citizen of Nepal told the court that the entry of the hijacked plane in the airspace of different countries was not possible without prior permission. He said that it was not possible for the pilot of the IC 814 to fly the plane in unknown territories without an air map provided by the aviation authorities of the concerned countries.

He also told the court that it was also not possible for the plane to fly for hours together without re-fueling, as had happened in the case of the hijacked aircraft.

In his disposition Neplai claimed that the government of India wanted to implicate someone else and he became the easy target.

UNI