Pooja Kataria survivor of IC-814: Amid the ongoing controversy over the Netflix web series IC-814 based on the 1999 Kandahar hijack, Pooja Kataria, who was on board the plane, has given her reaction. She said on Wednesday that there were five terrorists on board the Air India plane IC 814. This Air India plane took off from Kathmandu to Delhi. About half an hour after takeoff, the terrorists informed us that the plane had been hijacked. We were terrified to hear about the hijack. The terrorists asked us to keep our heads down. We did not even know when we reached Kandahar.

This series is made for entertainment-Pooja

Talking to news agency ANI, Pooja said, 'People's health was deteriorating. People were scared. Seeing all this, a terrorist named Burger had a little soft attitude. He helped people. He asked people to play antakshari. While the other terrorist named Doctor gave many speeches to convert to Islam. He was calling the other two terrorists present in the plane by the names of Bhola and Shankar. This series has been made for entertainment. I don't know why people are getting angry after watching it. When the plane landed in Amritsar, the Indian government could have done a commando operation, if this had happened then the plane would not have been able to go out of Indian territory.'

Netflix added the real names of terrorists

Meanwhile, amid controversy over the names of terrorists, Netflix has added the real names of the Pakistani hijackers who were Islamic terrorists responsible for the 1999 IC814 hijacking. The names added to the web series are Ibrahim Athar, Shahid Akhtar Saeed, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim, and Shakir. The controversy erupted after a section of viewers objected to the human portrayal of terrorists in the web series and references to their Hindu code names, arguing that the distortion of the real identities of the hijackers amounts to a misrepresentation of historical events.

Netflix India's content head summoned

As the controversy escalated, Information and Broadcasting Secretary Sanjay Jaju summoned Netflix India's content head Monica Shergill, and expressed the government's strong disagreement with the portrayal of certain elements in the web series. Netflix India's Vice President (Content) Monica Shergill said, "The initial disclaimer has been updated to include the real and code names of the hijackers for the benefit of viewers unaware of the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814 in 1999." She said in a statement, "The names given in the series reflect the code names used during the actual incident."

The series tells the true incident of kidnapping

Directed by director Anubhav Sinha, this web series stars actors like Vijay Verma, Patralekha, Pankaj Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah, Arvind Swami, and Dia Mirza. This web series narrates the true incident of plane hijacking by Pakistan's terrorist organization Harkat-ul Mujahideen in December 1999. The 'fictitious names' used by the hijackers in the series are publicly present on many platforms, including the official statement of the Union Home Ministry issued on January 6, 2000. The government has taken a tough stand against the web series, with a senior representative arguing that 'no one has the right to play with the emotions of the people of this country.' The representative said that filmmakers should think before showing something in a wrong way. He said, 'You can be liberal, but you cannot portray institutions in a wrong way.'