Sartaj Singh
‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’ transports us to Kathmandu in 1999, to the day of Indian Airlines Flight IC 814 being hijacked. Helmed by Anubhav Sinha and Trishant Srivastava, the Netflix series vividly recreates the shocking chain of events that follow the aircraft going from Kathmandu to Kandahar, with several refueling stops along the way. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to everyone but a chosen few, a RAW agent was also an unwitting hostage on the plane. When the passenger list arrives in the hands of top RAW officials, they realize that one of their senior officers, Kailash Chauhan, is among the hostages. They discreetly cross out his name from the list, avoiding humiliation as an agency while also preserving their agent’s safety.
Based on the actual events traced in Devi Sharan and Sringjoy Chowdhury’s 2000 book, ‘Flight Into Fear,’ the show masterfully depicts the unfolding chaos. None of the parties involved in the incident, from terrorists to intelligence agency heads, seem to have a complete grasp on the situation. The presence of Kailash Chauhan, a RAW officer, on the very aircraft that is hijacked, seems to be an outlandish occurrence that begs investigation into the real-world incident.
Kailash Chauhan is Based on Former RAW Officer Shashi Bhusan Singh Tomar
The character of Kailash Chauhan represents an actual RAW agent, Shashi Bhusan Singh Tomar, whose story behind being caught up in the hijacking gives credence to reality being stranger than fiction. Prior to post-production, ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’ had 30 hours of footage, which had to be cut down to five hours by the editors. Among the axed segments, there were likely many featuring Kailash Chauhan because, despite his relative importance and intriguing presence, the show does not focus on him in any subplots. Chauhan’s real-life counterpart, Tomar, may have a lot more to do with the hijacking story than is apparent in the series.
S.B.S. Tomar began his career as a 1986 batch IPS officer from West Bengal Cadre and was the first secretary of the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu in 1999. As a senior RAW agent, he oversaw intelligence gathering on a large scale. According to former RAW officer RK Yadav, (U.V. Singh) Tomar’s junior, noticed suspicious activity originating from the Pakistani Embassy targeting the Kathmandu airport. U.V. Singh was informed by an asset that the vehicle registered to the first secretary of the Pakistani Embassy in Kathmandu had entered Tribhuvan International Airport and avoided a search using diplomatic immunity. Singh believed that plotters from Pakistan were about to hijack a flight using the weapons that had been smuggled through by their Embassy’s vehicle.
In his book, ‘Mission R&AW,’ Yadav claims that Tomar completely disregarded the information and did not report it to higher-ups. “That RAW operative (U.V. Singh) was asked by Tomar to check the veracity of the report,” Yadav writes in ‘Mission R&AW.’ “When RAW operative revealed that his source was a responsible officer, Tomar rebuked him and warned him not to spread rumours. This report was never sent by Tomar to RAW headquarters and he suppressed it without crosschecking.”
S.B.S. Tomar’s Presence May Have Affected the Amritsar Situation
According to reports, Tomar was traveling to New Delhi to visit his wife, who was facing medical complications. He was also said to be carrying a briefcase with classified documents, which included the report of a possible hijacking when his flight was hijacked. Besides being a senior RAW official, Tomar was the brother-in-law of N.K. Singh, the Cabinet Secretary to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the time. As seen in the Netflix series, the DG of Punjab Police, Sarabjit Singh, had his commandos on standby at the airport, but the Crisis Management Group (CMG) opted to wait for NSG commandos. According to notable speculators, the CMG took the extra precaution as N.K. Singh pushed to guarantee Tomar’s safety.
The RAW chief at the time, A.S. Dulat, contradicted this narrative. “We knew that he was on board and we did not want any harm to come to him but that had nothing to do with what happened in Amritsar,” stated Dulat, clarifying why he did not include the incident in his memoir, ‘A Life in the Shadows.’ He added, “I did not want to mention that as he was a friend and a colleague and I did not want to bring him into the limelight but what has been said (about proposed Amritsar operation of IC 814) is wrong.” However, in his memoir, Dulat admits that the Amritsar situation needed decisive action and that no one was willing to take responsibility for sending in the Punjab Police commandos.
Tomar Retained His Position and Retired in 2022 After an Eventful Career
S.B.S. Tomar continued to serve in RAW after the IC 814 hijacking incident. He became embroiled in another agency controversy when RAW joint secretary Rabinder Singh was accused of being a double agent in 2004 and defected to New York. According to reports, his colleagues believed that Tomar tipped off Rabinder Singh about the surveillance placed upon him. Tomar was the last to see Singh in New Delhi before he defected to the United States, where he was alleged to have been selling secrets. Notably, Tomar was posted in New York in 2012, leading fellow RAW officers to speculate that the two may have shared a drink.
Tomar was at the center of yet another controversy in 2018 when he was serving as the RAW station chief in Dhaka. Following the overwhelming victory of the Awami League in Bangladesh’s 2018 general election, senior journalist Chandan Nandy tweeted, alleging that Tomar was involved in rigging votes for the pro-India party. The tweet was deleted shortly after. Tomar continued working in RAW, even holding Director General equivalent positions. In 2022, he was the second most senior officer in the agency after then Secretary of RAW Samant Goel. Reports place his retirement date on May 30, 2022, and not many personal details are publicly known about the intriguing agent.
