1978 Air India Plane Hijacking: On a cold evening of December 20, 1978, two young men rose from their seats in the 15th row of Indian Airlines flight 410 and walked calmly toward the cockpit. No passenger seemed alarmed. None of the crew sensed danger. One of the men had politely asked for permission to approach the cockpit, so courteously that nothing felt out of place.
The aircraft was flying from Calcutta, now Kolkata, to Delhi via Lucknow, carrying 126 passengers and six crew members. It was barely 15 minutes away from landing at Delhi’s Palam airport when the routine journey took a sudden turn.
According to an India Today report, a crew member, GV Dey, was escorting the young man toward the cockpit to relay his request to the captain. At that moment, the second man grabbed the elbow of air hostess Indira Thakre, while his companion tried to force his way inside.
The report said that the cockpit’s magnetic door had automatically locked. When the two men pushed with full force, the lock gave way and they burst inside. By then, both passengers and crew realised something was terribly wrong.
Moments later, the captain’s voice echoed through the cabin. The plane had been hijacked. The flight, he announced, was being diverted to Patna.
Almost immediately, another announcement followed. The destination had changed again. The aircraft was now heading toward Varanasi.
India Today quoted the captain describing heated arguments inside the cockpit before those announcements were made. He later recalled how difficult it was to make the hijackers understand that an aircraft had a limited flying range.
They first demanded that the plane be taken to Nepal. When the captain explained, especially to the more aggressive of the two who kept pressing a pistol to his temple, that there was not enough fuel, they changed their demand to Bangladesh. The captain later said that the hijacker appeared to have forgotten the geography lessons taught in school.
After leaving the cockpit, the armed men began shouting slogans and delivering fiery speeches. They denounced what they called the “vindictive politics” of the then Janata Party government, which had come to power after the March 1977 elections, and demanded the release of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Her arrest had taken place just a day earlier.
Gandhi’s arrest had already unsettled the country. Writing for The New York Times, journalist William Borders described how the Lok Sabha, after seven days of stormy debate, voted to expel Gandhi from Parliament and send her to jail.
She was accused of harassing government officials who had been investigating Maruti Limited, a company linked to her son Sanjay Gandhi, during her tenure as prime minister in 1975. She dismissed the action as politically motivated revenge. During the parliamentary debate, members repeatedly referred to Emergency-era censorship, arrests and authoritarian rule. Gandhi refused to apologise and declared she had no regrets.
Borders wrote that the prime minister insisted on being arrested publicly from Parliament rather than silently from home. After a three-hour wait, police officers arrived with a warrant. Gandhi reportedly climbed onto a heavy wooden desk with folded hands. She smiled and stepped down. Before leaving, she wrote lines from an old English song, later read aloud by a supporter in the crowd, urging people to bid farewell with smiles rather than tears.
When protests erupted across the country following her arrest, the Congress party warned that demonstrations would continue for as long as she stayed in jail.
The hijackers, who identified themselves as members of the Youth Congress, chose a more extreme route. They hijacked an entire aircraft to press for Gandhi’s release. They were later identified as 27-year-old Bholanath Pandey and 28-year-old Devendra Pandey.
Inside the cabin, they announced they were Gandhian followers who believed in non-violence. They insisted they had no intention of harming passengers. There were several moments when passengers or crew could have overpowered them, but no one made an attempt.
At one point, the hijackers barred passengers from using the toilets. Former Law Minister AK Sen was among those on 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 parked at a corner of the runway. The hijackers demanded to speak with then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ram Naresh Yadav. He initially refused but travelled to Varanasi after instructions from Prime Minister Morarji Desai.
Through the aircraft’s wireless system, the hijackers laid out four demands, with the unconditional release of Gandhi at the top of the list. They insisted that the chief minister personally come on board. Yadav responded by asking for the release of women and foreign nationals first.
During the standoff, a passenger named SK Modi silently opened the rear door and jumped out of the aircraft without anyone noticing.
The next day, then Tourism and Civil Aviation Minister Purushottam Kaushik briefed the Lok Sabha, explaining that Modi had escaped with the help of an air hostess and informed authorities that there were two hijackers, one dressed in a white pyjama-kurta and the other in a white dhoti-kurta. He also reported that the hijackers were carrying pamphlets in Hindi and English demanding the release of a “national leader” and calling for publicity for their actions.
Negotiations dragged on through the night. The hijackers demanded that all criminal cases against Gandhi be withdrawn, that the Janata Party government resign and that the aircraft be flown back to Lucknow so they could address the press.
The chief minister offered to take them to Lucknow in a government aircraft if all passengers were released. They rejected the proposal and demanded that the plane be refuelled. The central government instructed negotiators not to refuel the aircraft and to continue talks.
By early morning, passengers complained that the cabin had become suffocating. The hijackers allowed the rear doors to be opened. At that moment, the captain pulled the emergency slide release. As the slides dropped, passengers began fleeing onto the runway. Within minutes, nearly half the passengers had escaped.
Around the same time, the father of one hijacker arrived at Varanasi airport and spoke to his son over the wireless. Hearing his father’s voice, both young men emerged from the aircraft shouting slogans in support of Gandhi and surrendered to authorities.
According to The Indian Express, the hijacking drama lasted 13 hours. The duo handed over two toy pistols and a cricket ball wrapped in black cloth, designed to resemble a grenade. They were taken into custody while raising pro-Gandhi slogans.
During interrogation, both men claimed they had received money from Congress leaders to carry out the act. They named two Pradesh Congress Committee officials who allegedly gave them RS 400 and Rs 200 respectively. Out of that amount, they spent Rs 350 on flight tickets from Lucknow to Delhi.
Indira Gandhi was released from jail days later. The hijackers, however, served nine months and 28 days in Lucknow jail for the hijacking. 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 the Congress awarded Bholanath a ticket from the Ballia Doaba Assembly seat. At just 27, he became an MLA in 1980 and won again in 1989. Though he lost subsequent elections, the party continued to give him organisational roles.
Devendra was elected twice from the Jaisinghpur Assembly seat and later served as Congress’s Uttar Pradesh state general secretary.
In his book Indian Airports: Shocking Ground Realities, Krishna R. Wadhwani quoted Devendra describing the hijacking as madness born out of absolute devotion to the Gandhi family. He added that in those days, aircraft hijacking was not even seen as a serious crime.
Researcher A Surya Prakash, citing Lok Sabha debates from December 23, said that while Opposition MPs condemned the hijacking, senior Congress leaders, including R. Venkataraman and Vasant Sathe, attempted to downplay it. Venkataraman reportedly said public anger faded once it became known that the weapons were toys and a cricket ball, turning the episode into a national joke.
Sathe questioned whether the incident should be called hijacking at all, suggesting it was more like “sky joking” by misguided youth.
Then Prime Minister Morarji Desai criticised such statement, warning that panic in the cockpit could have caused a major disaster. He made it clear that whether the weapons were real or fake made no difference to pilots faced with an immediate threat.
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