Akal Takht to honour one of the five who hijacked Indian Airlines plane to Lahore

The Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of Sikhism, has decided to confer the ‘Panth Sewak’ award on Gajinder Singh, one of the five men from the Dal Khalsa who hijacked the Delhi-Srinagar Indian Airlines flight IC423, with 117 on board, to Lahore on September 29, 1981.

The hijacking was carried out to protest against the arrest of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale earlier that year. Gajinder along with the four others were arrested by the Pakistanis on September 30, tried, and jailed. They were release in 1994. While two of the hijackers returned to India, the other three decided to stay back.

India had put Gajinder Singh’s name in the list of 20 “most wanted” terrorists in January 2002 and had been seeking his extradition from Pakistan.