Indian Airlines Flight 814: what Wikipedia removed
Indian Airlines Flight 814 was hijacked in 1999 by five members of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and flown to Kandahar. Through the October 2023 snapshot the opening said the plane “was hijacked shortly after takeoff by terrorists.” Today’s opening says the flight “was hijacked… by five members of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen,” without the word terrorists; militant survives 6 times elsewhere in the article. A reader today learns who hijacked the plane and not that Wikipedia once called them terrorists in its own voice.
The word “militant” appeared 2 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 2005. Today the opening carries none; the body carries 6. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01.
The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot
Section titled “The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot”| word | 2005 | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 6 October 2023 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| militant | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| terror | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 3 |
| islamist | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| jihad | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| hostage | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.
What was taken out
Section titled “What was taken out”- The sentence calling the hijackers terrorists, replaced with a description naming only the organization.
How it opened then, and now
Section titled “How it opened then, and now”2005 (revision 16258510):
Indian Airlines Flight 814 was a flight that flew from Kathmandu , Nepal to Delhi , India ‘s Indira Gandhi International Airport On Christmas Eve , December 24 , 1999 , the flight was hijacked shortly after takeoff by terrorists . The plane was at first forced to fly to Amritsar , India , before flying to Lahore , Pakistan and a military base in the United Arab Emirates , where 25 passengers were exchanged for jet fuel, food , and water . The terrorists had stabbed to death one of the 173 passengers prior to landing in the United Arab Emirates. The victim was 25-year Rupin Katyal, who was on his honeymoon. They dumped his body off in the UAE as a warning. The hijacked plane later flew to Kan…
2025 (revision 1296879855):
1999 Indian aircraft hijacking “IC 814” redirects here. For the 2024 Netflix web series based on these events, see IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack . Indian Airlines Flight 814 , commonly known as IC 814 , was an Indian Airlines Airbus A300 that was hijacked on 24 December 1999 by five members of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen . The passenger flight, en route from Kathmandu to Delhi , was taken over shortly after it entered Indian airspace at about 16:53 IST . The aircraft carried 190 occupants — 179 passengers and 11 crew members including Captain Devi Sharan, First Officer Rajinder Kumar, and Flight Engineer Anil Kumar Jaggia. The aircraft was flown to Amritsar , Lahore , and Dubai . While in Dubai, the …
Related
Section titled “Related”- The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
- The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
- Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
- The live article on Wikipedia
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