1978 Air India hijacking: On a cold evening of December 20, 1978, two young men in the 15th row of Indian Airlines Flight 410 got up from their seats and calmly walked towards the cockpit. None of the passengers seemed nervous. None of the crew realized the danger. One of the men politely asked permission to go near the cockpit, so politely that nothing seemed inappropriate.
The aircraft was flying from Calcutta, now Kolkata, to Delhi via Lucknow, carrying 126 passengers and six crew members. It was barely 15 minutes from landing at Delhi’s Palam airport when the routine journey took a sudden turn.
According to India Today report, crew member GV Dey was taking the young man towards the cockpit to convey his request to the captain. At the same time, the other man held the elbow of air hostess Indira Thackeray while her companion tried to force his way in.
The report said the magnetic door of the cockpit had locked itself. When both the men pushed with full force the lock broke and they entered inside. By then, both passengers and crew realized that something was very wrong.
After a few moments the captain’s voice echoed in the cabin. The plane was hijacked. He announced that the flight was being diverted to Patna.
Almost immediately, another announcement came. The destination had changed again. The plane was now going towards Varanasi.
India Today quoted the captain as describing the heated debate inside the cockpit before those announcements. He later recalled how difficult it was to explain to hijackers that an aircraft had limited flight range.
He first demanded to take the plane to Nepal. When the Captain, especially the more aggressive of the two with a pistol to his temple, explained that there was not enough fuel, he changed his demand to Bangladesh. The captain later said that it appeared that the hijacker had forgotten the geography lessons taught in school.
After coming out of the cockpit, armed people started raising slogans and making fiery speeches. He condemned the “vindictive politics” of the then Janata Party government, which came to power after the March 1977 elections, and demanded the release of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He was arrested just a day before.
Gandhi’s arrest had already destabilized the country. Writing for The New York Times, journalist William Borders described how after seven days of stormy debate the Lok Sabha voted to expel Gandhi from Parliament and send him to prison.
He was accused of harassing government officials investigating Maruti Limited, a company linked to his son Sanjay Gandhi, during his tenure as Prime Minister in 1975. He dismissed this action as politically motivated revenge. During parliamentary debates, members repeatedly referred to Emergency-era censorship, arrests and authoritarian rule. Gandhi refused to apologize and declared that he had no regrets.
Borders wrote that the Prime Minister insisted on being publicly arrested from Parliament rather than quietly leaving the house. After waiting for three hours, police officers arrived with a warrant. Gandhi reportedly climbed onto a heavy wooden table with folded hands. She smiled and got down. Before leaving, he wrote lines from an old English song, which were later read aloud by a supporter in the crowd, and urged people to bid farewell with smiles rather than tears.
When protests broke out across the country after her arrest, the Congress party warned that the protests would continue as long as she remained in jail.
The hijackers, who identified themselves as members of the Youth Congress, chose a more extreme path. They hijacked an entire plane to press for Gandhi’s release. They were later identified as Bholanath Pandey, 27, and Devendra Pandey, 28.
Inside the cabin, he announced that he was a Gandhian follower who believed in non-violence. He insisted that he had no intention of harming the passengers. There were many moments when the passengers or crew could have overpowered them, but no one tried.
At one point, the hijackers prevented passengers from using the toilet. Former law minister AK Sen was also included in the board. Unable to wait any longer, he reportedly shouted that they could shoot him if they wanted, but he was going to the toilet.
By then the plane had landed in Varanasi and was standing at a corner of the runway. The kidnappers demanded to talk to the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Ramnaresh Yadav. He initially refused but traveled to Varanasi following instructions from Prime Minister Morarji Desai.
Through the plane’s wireless system, the hijackers put forward four demands, with Gandhi’s unconditional release at the top. He insisted that the Chief Minister come on board in person. Responding, Yadav first demanded the release of women and foreign nationals.
During the standoff, a passenger named SK Modi quietly opened the back door and jumped out of the plane without anyone knowing.
The next day, the then Tourism and Civil Aviation Minister Purushottam Kaushik, while briefing the Lok Sabha, said that Modi had escaped with the help of an air hostess and informed the authorities that there were two kidnappers, one wearing a white pajama-kurta and the other wearing a white dhoti-kurta. He also reported that the hijackers were carrying leaflets in Hindi and English, demanding the release of a “national leader” and seeking publicity for their actions.
The conversation continued throughout the night. The hijackers demanded that all criminal cases against Gandhi be withdrawn, the Janata Party government resign and the plane be brought back to Lucknow so that they could address the press.
The Chief Minister offered to take all the passengers to Lucknow by government plane once they were released. He rejected the offer and demanded that the plane be refueled. The central government instructed the negotiators not to refuel the plane and to continue the talks.
By morning, passengers complained that it was suffocating in the cabin. The hijackers allowed the back doors to be opened. At the same time, the Captain pulled the emergency slide release. As soon as the slide fell, passengers started running on the runway. Within a few minutes, almost half the passengers escaped.
Around the same time, the father of one of the kidnappers arrived at Varanasi airport and spoke to his son on the wireless. Hearing their father’s voice, both the youth came out of the plane shouting slogans in support of Gandhiji and surrendered before the authorities.
According to Indian Express, the kidnapping drama continued for 13 hours. The two handed over two toy pistols and a cricket ball wrapped in black cloth, which looked like a grenade. He was taken into custody while raising pro-Gandhi slogans.
During interrogation, both the men claimed that they had received money from Congress leaders to carry out the act. He named two officials of the State Congress Committee who allegedly gave him Rs 400 and Rs 200 respectively. Of that amount, he spent Rs 350 on a flight ticket from Lucknow to Delhi.
After a few days, Indira Gandhi was released from jail. However, the kidnappers served nine months and 28 days in Lucknow jail for kidnapping. Months later, Gandhi returned to power at the Centre, and the cases against Bholanath and Devendra Pandey were withdrawn.
Journalist Maulshree Seth later wrote in The Indian Express that Congress gave ticket to Bholanath from Ballia Doaba assembly seat. At the age of just 27, he became an MLA in 1980 and won again in 1989. Although he lost the subsequent elections, the party continued to give him organizational roles.
Devendra was elected twice from the Jaisinghpur assembly seat and later served as the Uttar Pradesh state general secretary of the Congress.
In his book Indian Airports: Shocking Ground Realities, Krishna R. Wadhwani, quoting Devendra, described the kidnapping as madness born out of complete devotion to the Gandhi family. He said that in those days hijacking was not even seen as a serious crime.
Researcher A Surya Prakash, citing the December 23 Lok Sabha debate, said that while opposition MPs condemned the kidnapping, senior Congress leaders including R Venkatraman and Vasant Sathe tried to downplay it. Venkataraman reportedly said that public anger subsided when it was revealed that the weapons were toys and cricket balls, turning the episode into a national joke.
Sathe questioned whether the incident should be called a kidnapping, suggesting that it amounted to a “sky joke” by misguided youth.
The then Prime Minister Morarji Desai criticized such statements, warning that panic in the cockpit could have led to a major disaster. He clarified that whether the weapons were real or fake, it did not matter to the pilots facing immediate danger.
