NAMBI NARAYANAN | 1994 ISRO Espionage(Fabricated) Case | ROCKETRY : The Nambi Effect | Unsung HERO of Chandrayaan-1
Who is NAMBI NARAYANAN?
S. NAMBI NARAYANAN is an INDIAN scientist & an aerospace engineer who was born in middle-class Tamil Brahmin family on 12th Dec 1941 in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu, where he also completed his schooling. He did BE-Mechanical from College of Engineering, Madurai & earned himself a NASA fellowship and was accepted into Princeton University in 1969 for Master’s in Chemical Rocket Propulsion in only 10 months.
Despite being offered a job in NASA, he returned to INDIA with expertise in liquid propulsion at a time when INDIAN ROCKETRY was still solely dependent on solid propellants.
“When all scientists were working hard to get into NASA, he rejected NASA only for the sake of our country’s development”
Remember at that time, Liquid fuel rocket technology is the need of the hour for our space programme. Narayanan introduced the liquid fuel rocket technology in India in the early 1970s, when A. P. J. Abdul Kalam team was working on solid motors.
“A VISIONARY : He foresaw the need for liquid fuelled engines for ISRO’s future space programmes & received encouragement from the then ISRO chairman SATISH DHAWAN, & his successor U.R. RAO.”
Narayanan developed LPM(liquid propellant motors), first building a successful 600 kgs thrust engine in the mid-1970s and thereafter moving on to bigger engines.
Till here everything was just fine but after this in 1992 his life suddenly took a very anguish turn.
What is ISRO Espionage Case?
“This case will discourage the youth” ~ Nambi Narayanan
In 1992, INDIA has signed an agreement with RUSSIA for transfer of technology to develop cryogenic-based fuels. The agreement was signed for Rs 235 Crores, when US & France were offering the same tech for Rs 950 Crores & Rs 650 Crores respectively.
- Factoid : 1992 was the time when USSR dissolved. RUSSIA was weak relative to now. At that time, RUSSIA was a good friend of INDIA & AMERICA(strongest at that time also) was a good friend of PAKISTAN and a strong critic of INDIA.
Documents show that then US president George H.W. Bush (father bush-1991) wrote to Russia, raising objections against this agreement and even threatening to blacklist from the country from the select-five club. Russia, under Boris Yeltsin, succumbed to the pressure and denied cryogenic tech to INDIA.
- Factoid : BORIS YELTSIN, the then president of Russia was considered to be a “not bold” president. If Vladimir Putin was the president at that time, then the story could be completely different.
To bypass this monopoly, INDIA signed a new agreement with Russia to fabricate 4 cryogenic engines after floating a global tender without the former transfer of technology. ISRO had already reached a consensus with Keltch(Kerala Hitech Industries Limited) which would have provided the cheapest tender for fabricating engines. But this did not happen due to following mentioned events.
Now you(reader) would question that where Nambi Narayan is involved in all this, Well the Project Head (or Director) of Cryogenic Project at ISRO was none other than our beloved scientist NAMBI NARAYANAN.
- Factoid : NAMBI NARAYANAN was considered as a National Hero at that time due to his success in various projects at ISRO. He was also admired by almost all great leaders in this field : APJ ABDUL KALAM, VIKRAM SARABHAI, SATISH DHAWAN, UV RAO.
Since the following story involves many events at different dates Let us sort all of them via time ascendingly:-
# OCT 1994 : Maldivian national (alleged Intelligence officer) Mariam Rasheed were arrested in Thiruvananthapuram for allegedly obtaining secret drawings of ISRO rocket engines to sell to Pakistan.
# NOV 1994 : NAMBI NARAYAN arrested along with deputy director of ISRO D. Sasikumaran & Indian representative of a Russian space agency K. Chandrashekar S.K. Sharma, a labour contractor Fousiya Hasan (Maldivian friend of Rasheeda) were also arrested.
Defense officials said the secrets pertained to highly confidential “flight test data” from experiments with rocket & satellite launches were sold to Pakistan for millions by NAMBI NARAYANAN & D. SASIKUMARAN. When his house was searched, nothing seemed suspicious, his house was as ordinary as of a middle class person of that time and didn’t show signs of the corrupt gains he was accused of.
“Narayanan was arrested and was lodged in jail for 50 days”
According to him(Nambi Narayanan), the IB(Intelligence Bureau) & State police officials who were interrogating him in connection with the case, wanted him to make false accusations against the top brass of ISRO. But when refused to comply, he was tortured by the officials until he collapsed and was admitted to hospital.
In his statement, Narayanan had later said that his main complaint was against ISRO because it didn’t support him. KRISHNASWAMY, who was ISRO chairman at the time stated that ISRO could not interfere in a legal matter.
# APRIL 1996 : The CBI files report before Kerala court, says espionage case is false and there was absolutely no evidence to back the charges.
# MAY 1996 : Court accepts the CBI’s report and discharges all accused.
# MAY 1998 : Supreme Court awards compensation of Rs 1 lakh to Narayanan and others, who were discharged in the case; directs the state govt. to pay the amount
# APRIL 1999 : Narayanan approaches the NHRC (National Humans Right Commission) claiming compensation from the state for the mental agony and torture suffered by him.
- Factoid : NAMBI was retired from ISRO in 2001.
# APRIL 2017 : The SC begins hearing on Narayanan’s plea, seeking action against former Kerala DGP Siby Mathews and others who probed the matter.
# 3rd MAY 2018 : 3-Judge bench comprising then CJI Dipak Mishra says it is considering awarding Mr. Narayanan a compensation of 75 Rs lakh and restoring his reputation.
# SEP 2018 : SC awards 50 Rs lakh compensation to 76 year old Narayanan for being subjected to mental cruelty in the ISRO case. However the Government of Kerala decided to give him ₹ 1.3 crore.
In between cases, He appeared in many interviews & in one of the interview when he was asked “Who did this”, see his reply from the image text below :
*MUST READ*
“On 26 Jan 2019, he was conferred the Padma Bhushan award by the Government of India.”
This were the whole story in detail. Remember “Devil lies in the Detail”.
SUFFERINGS by NAMBI & his whole family
Though many people believed that he was not a traitor but there are some people who were quite convinced that Nambi is no more than a Pakistani Spy. His family suffered from many agonies absolutely for no reason. In his auto-biography, he described some horrendous events where his family was publicly humiliated due to a fake case.
Priests at temples refused to give Holy offerings (Prashads) to his wife, his son was bullied by his classmates, Auto-Rickshaws refused to give ride to his wife and Neighbors jeered at his family and stated them as disloyal to country.
Even NAMBI once decided to suicide but his son gave him motivation to survive and bounce back. His son told him if he commit suicide then his whole family will be considered “Unfaithful” by the society and make their lives as difficult as hell to live in. This gives him inspiration to fight back against the system & finally he won the battle against the bad.
Why NAMBI NARAYANAN is in news now-a-days?
2 factors :-
- The Central Government moved to the Supreme Court seeking urgent hearing on the report filed by a high-level committee regarding the role of erring official in the 1994 ISRO espionage case. He already waited for decades, I hope he don’t have to wait for much long now and court will take the action in urgent.
Read more about it from the news article of TOI from the link below :
2. “ROCKETRY: THE NAMBI EFFECT” (Hindi Movie by R. Madhavan) based on the life of NAMBI NARAYANAN, trailer was recently launched on YouTube. See it from below link :
- Factoid : NAMBI launched his biography titled “Ormakalude bhramanapadham” on 26th OCT 2017.
Why is the role of NAMBI in Chandrayaan-1?
In 1970s after working for nearly two decades, with French assistance, Narayanan’s team developed the Vikas engine used by several ISRO rockets including the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) that took Chandrayaan-1 to the moon in 2008. The Vikas engine is used in the second stage of PSLV and as the second and the four strap-on stages of Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).
Success of VIKAS ENGINE bought him a huge respect and fame in the country which was completely eradicated by the Fabricated 1994 ISRO Espionage Case.
What I have to say about all this?
“Justice given late, is injustice itself” ~ Lord Shree Rama
Undoubtedly, no one can compensate a person’s decades of sufferings and agony even with such amount of money but one can learn some lessons from this discouraging story and try not to let his happen once again to any scientist in future.
Nambi Narayanan, was at his young age at that time but instead of focusing his time on research, he was bound to be involved in a fabricated case. If this wouldn’t have happened, then he might have developed many new rocketry technologies by now and lead the ISRO to a better level in future.
The cryogenic technology which could be developed by 1999, was developed in 2014, approximately 15 years of lag suffered by ISRO & country’s space development slowed down drastically. If this tech would have developed in 1999 then currently ISRO might be at higher level than now and be a competitor to NASA “at that time also”.
This story might discourage the young scientists in our country who want to contribute to their nation But instead we can take this in a positive way that — Even if bad is so much mightier than good, but its the good that ultimately wins.
Now-a-days it is common to see young students who wants to work “for” top MNCs & earn huge amount of money instead of using their minds for the innovation and development of country. Nambi Narayanan is a huge example for such millennials, he rejected NASA, where he can easily earn 10 times money relative to what he was given in ISRO. Better facilities, equipment, research grants and perks(relative to ISRO) were in NASA but instead he chose ISRO and rejected NASA only for the sake of development of our country. He did contributed significantly to our space programme in his limited time in ISRO.
Let’s End this Blog-cum-Article with Will Rogers quote…
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