Indian Airlines Flight 410

Indian Airlines Flight 410 was a domestic passenger flight from Calcutta to Palam Airport, Delhi, with a scheduled stopover at Lucknow.

On 20 December 1978, the plane was hijacked shortly before landing at Palam Airport by Bholanath Pandey and Devendra Pandey, who were armed with a toy gun and a cricket ball. The hijackers initially ordered the pilots to fly the plane to Nepal, which the pilots refused due to a shortage of fuel, then Bangladesh, where the pilots also refused the request for the same reason, before settling for Varanasi. The hijackers made speeches on the plane intercom informing passengers that the plane had been hijacked, that the passengers would not be harmed, claiming that the hijackers themselves were members of the Indian Youth Congress (I) (which was later denied by the Congress (I) leadership), and outlined their demands to the passengers.

Upon landing in Varanasi, the hijackers used the plane's radio to announce their demands to the authorities. Their main demands were the release of Indira Gandhi (who had been arrested after The Emergency), the withdrawal of all the cases against her son Sanjay Gandhi, and the resignation of the Janata Party government.

Negotiations commenced early in the morning of 21 December 1978, after a charter flight, carrying Ram Naresh Yadav, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, arrived at the airport at 1am (along with the Inspector General of the Police and the Chief Secretary). These negotiations continued for several hours, whilst the hijackers kept the 130 passengers and crew hostage within the Boeing 737-200, besides one passenger who reportedly managed to escape undetected during this time.

At roughly 6am in the morning, in response to passenger complaints about the “unbearably stuffy air” in the plane, the hijackers allowed the passengers to open the rear fuselage doors. This deployed the evacuation slide, and 60 passengers promptly took the opportunity to escape. The hijackers surrendered shortly afterwards.

After Indira Gandhi and her party returned to government in the 1980 Indian general election, the prosecution against the two hijackers was dropped. The Indian National Congress party rewarded them with party tickets for the 1980 state assembly election. Both won the election and became members of the legislative assembly of Uttar Pradesh. Bholanth served as a Congress MLA from 1980 to 1985, and 1989 to 1991 from Ballia, and Devendra remained a member of the house for two terms.

Devendra resigned from the party as the general secretary of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee. Bholanath Pandey also became general secretary of the Indian Youth Congress and secretary of the Indian National Congress. Bholanath Pandey unsuccessfully contested the 1991, 1996, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Salempur as a Congress candidate. Devendra never served the party as a general secretary after the fact for Uttar Pradesh.