In July 1998, the trio attempted their first escape. The story of this attempt began with a man named Mac, Muhammad Arshad Cheema, a first secretary in the consular wing of the Pakistan Mission in Kathmandu.
Cheema was also instrumental in the infamous hijacking of the Air India flight IC814 from Kathmandu in 1999. The plan was simple: Hawara, Bheora and Tara would use a deadly mixture of RDX and PETN to blow open a portion of the jail. Unknown to the police then, Satnam Singh, a fellow BKI member, had been frequenting the jail, carrying several goodies for the inmates. One such item was a mithai ka dabba (a box of sweets), which contained the RDX and PETN.
Hawara, like many other prisoners, carried a mobile phone while he was in jail from which he used to call people all over the world to manage, monitor and plot their escape. He used to even coordinate BKI activities all over the world. On several occasions, he even called an operative in the US on whom the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was keeping tabs. Imagine their surprise when they began intercepting calls from a prison in Chandigarh not once but four times. The information was relayed to the Tihar Jail authorities. Hawara’s cell was raided and all his possessions were seized.