Written by: Sauharda Bajracharya - 26010, Grade IX
Posted on: 08 June, 2022
We all know the 9/11 attack that happened in U.S. Osama Bin Laden, the founder of Al-Qaeda crashed a plane in the Twin towers in Manhattan, New York City. Before 9/11 on September 11, 2001, there was an incident in Nepal that led to this moment. Let’s roll back to the year 1994 in New Delhi. 4 British visitors were killed and the mastermind behind this was Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. His motive was to free out 100s of prisoners friends from the Indian prison. He and his other friends tried to free them out many times but they were unsuccessful. They planned a new plan and one of the members, Dawood Ibrahim thought that hijacking a plane from Nepal would be the best option to free their friends. So, on 24th December, 1999 an Indian plane from Kathmandu, Nepal with destination Delhi took off from Tribhuvan International Airport. The Indian Airline Flight 814 with 176 passengers on board and 15 crew members was hijacked shortly after the takeoff. The hijackers instructed the Captain on board to fly to Lahore, Pakistan. After the Captain told the hijackers that the plane had insufficient fuel to fly to Lahore, they stopped at Amritsar. The Indian ATC (Air Traffic Control) was informed about this at around 4:40 pm. As the hijackers were armed and had threatened that they would kill all the passengers if the plane had not taken off sooner, they had to refuel the plane as fast as possible to avoid any casualties. The plane had taken off from Amritsar and was heading to Lahore. The Pakistani ATC did not allow the plane to land and had turned all the navigation lights to prevent the landing but as the plane would land on the highway, they turned the navigation lights back on. The plane landed in Lahore and so that the plane wouldn’t fly away, the ATC turned off the navigation lights. They tried to negotiate with the hijackers but were denied. The plane was then taken to Dubai’s Al Minhad Air Base and then later taken to Kandahar, Afghanistan. 1 passenger named Rupin Katyal was killed whereas Satnam Singh was attacked and survived. On December 25th, India negotiated with the hijackers and the hijackers released the passengers. The prisoners released from this contributed to 9/11 and the mastermind behind this was Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. The security system in the Tribhuvan International airport couldn’t detect the guns that the hijackers were carrying and from this small mistake, it contributed and led to 9/11 in the U.S.
