a repot on khandar hijack
Answers
And then came the next ‘goof up’. The three terrorists were sent to Kandahar in the same plane as Indian Minister Jaswant Singh. This created a storm in Parliament that of course subsided eventually. Reporters at the time were unable to confirm it, but the story making the rounds was that Singh had gone not to ensure the passengers safe release alone but with the bounty that the hijackers had asked for. This was never confirmed, and of course will never be, but reports continued to circulate that the hijackers had been persuaded to whittle down the number of men but not the amount of money they had demanded. The Taliban gave them ten hours to ‘disappear’ which they did, to surface again later in terror attacks against India.
Singh defended himself later, "It was not my decision alone. The entire cabinet decided. Advaniji and Arun Shourie were initially opposed to it, even I was reluctant but (then) Prime Minister Vajpayee felt that every effort must be made to save the lives of the passengers hence we all fell in line.”