‘Someone’ pulled the strings

NEW DELHI: India has no substantive evidence to believe that Osama bin Laden was involved in the hijack of flight IC-814. The government has neither intercepts nor direct inputs, an intelligence source said.

But the source, who was involved in handling the hijack, said an analysis done after the incident said that ‘someone’ was prompting the Afghan foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, and other Taliban officials at Kandahar during the crisis.

One line of analysis indicated that al-Qaeda was prompting the Taliban because those released, especially Masood Azhar, were allies of the terrorist group. “Al-Qaeda may have been involved to the extent of securing their people,” a source said. But there was no confirmation that bin Laden was directly involved. The world’s most wanted terrorist is not known to target India and has rarely issued a major threat against the country.

During the hostage crisis, the Taliban reneged on their initial promises to New Delhi. That turnaround fuelled Indian authorities’ suspicion that forces behind the scene may have been involved. But it is also likely that those at Kandahar were taking orders from the Mullah Omar regime, or from Pakistan.