The motive for the hijacking apparently was to secure the release of Islamist figures held in prison in India. The hostage crisis lasted for seven days and ended after India agreed to release three terrrorists – Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and Masood Azhar. The three have since been implicated in other terrorist actions, such as the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl and the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. The hijacking has been seen as one of the millennium attack plots in late December 1999 and early January 2000 by al-Qaeda-linked jihadists.