There is no dearth of controversies in God’s Own Country, otherwise known as Kerala. Even rationalists and atheists describe the State as God’s Own Country and it sounds a bit paradoxical. Our chief minister, a sworn Marxist who wears his atheist beliefs on his sleeves, always welcomes investors and tourists to ‘God’s Own Country’!
What makes Kerala population distinct from others is their passion for spicy and steamy developments happening around. You go to the tea vendor in the village square early morning and you are sure to see a group of people with steaming tea listening to the one who reads morning newspapers. Each news is analysed ‘threadbare’ by the village political observers. The only drawback with the totally literate population is their trust and belief in the local vernacular dailies vying with one another in publishing “news stories” which the village folk would turn into exciting plots with sufficient quota of suspense, twists and of course sex-escapades.
The Gold Smuggling scam featuring Sivasankar, the then principal secretary to the chief minister, Swapna Suresh, a former liaison executive working in the office of a consulate, and a host of other political bigwigs were subject of hot discussion. What one heard during the interaction with tea-shop regulars in the village square would put authors like Tom Clancy to shame!
Let us leave aside the Gold Smuggling scam. The greatest spy thriller which hogged national limelight for months during 1994 and 1995 has come back to haunt the State’s hoi polloi. The CBI is investigating the people who were responsible for foisting the Indian Space Research Organisation spy scam of 1994 that rocked Kerala politics. Two eminent space engineers Nambi Narayanan and Sasikumaran who were behind India’s mission to develop the cryogenic engine for powering heavy duty launch vehicles (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicles-GSLV for short) were arrested along with two women from Maldives by the Special Investigation Team of Kerala Police for spying on the country’s space programme.
The charge against Narayanan and Sasikumaran was that they sold the cryogenic technology developed by ISRO to a neighbouring country through the two Maldivian women Mariam Rasheeda and Fauzia Hassan who were found overstaying in Thiruvananthapuram. The Special Branch Police officers who interrogated Rasheeda were told by the woman that she was working as a clerk in the Maldivian Army while her friend Hassan was a private citizen. Both of them had come to Thiruvananthapuram to get Hassan’s daughter admitted to a school in the capital city. But the cops who held a thorough search over the antecedents of Rasheeda found that she was in regular touch with Narayanan and Sasikumaran besides an inspector general of police by name Raman Srivastava. Prsto! Selective leaking of news by some cops in the state police as well as officials in the IB gave a twist to the case. The Kerala Police investigated the case for a while and handed it over to the CBI for further investigation as the former failed to make any breakthrough. The CBI, after a few months, closed the case telling that there were neither spies nor case. By that time a lot of damage has been done. Srivastava was placed under suspension, the then Chief Minister K Karunakaran had to resign and make way to his arch-enemy A K Antony. Both Nambi Narayanan and Sasikumaran quit ISRO in ignominy.
The CBI in their closure report had asked the Governments of India and Kerala to conduct a thorough probe to find out the master brains who crafted a spy case to tarnish the image of India’s premier space agency. Interestingly, had the spy scam would not have shaken ISRO and the Government of Kerala, Nambi Narayanan would have retired gracefully with an ace up his sleeve. He had a thrilling story to tell his grandchildren how he and his ISRO colleagues perfected the technology of Vikas engine that powered the Polar Satellite Launching Vehicle (PSLV) of the country that could put satellites weighing up to 2000 kg in Low Earth Orbits.
The closure of the probe by the CBI was followed by Spies From Space, a book authored by J Rajasekharan Nair, a maverick journalist based in Thiruvananthapuram who is a leading Human Rights activist as well as a gold mine of information about the shadow boxing in Kerala’s corridors of power. Nair came out with some perturbing information. The spy scam was foisted on ISRO by certain agencies (read CIA of the US) to prevent India from acquiring the cryogenic engine technology which would bring down the cost of accessibility to space by less than 50 percent and this would have resulted in India eating into the launch market business which have been monopolised by USA, Russia and France. The facts and figures provided by Nair after a painstaking research substantiated his arguments. He deserved three cheers as his peers in the profession were focussing only on the alleged orgies featuring the scientists, cops, businessmen and the Maldivian women! They cannot be blamed because Rasheeda had complained to some journalist who had interviewed her that Inspector Vijayan tried to violate her modesty.
The CBI directive that a probe should be ordered by the central and State governments to pinpoint the persons who had plotted the spy scam was getting dusted in the PMO as well as the chief minister’s office in Thiruvananthapuram. It looked like someone somewhere in the hierarchy never wanted the country to know the real motive behind the spy scandal. Much water has flown through Periyar River since then. Nambi Narayanan who was disgraced by the allegations against him that he sold the country’s sensitive space science technology approached the Supreme Court for initiating disciplinary action against the cops who tortured him physically and mentally during interrogation and also claimed compensation for the agony suffered by him. The apex court in September 2018 ordered Kerala Government to pay Rs 50 lakh as compensation to the scientist and also constituted headed by D K Jain, former supreme court judge to “find out the means to take appropriate steps against the erring police officers”. Based on the report submitted by the Jain committee, the Supreme Court in April 2021 ordered the CBI to look into the report. The investigating agency filed an FIR against seven Kerala Police officers and eleven IB officers for allegedly framing Nambi Narayanan on false charges in the ISRO espionage case.
The police officers against whom the FIR has been registered include Siby Mathews (who headed the SIT of Kerala Police that probed the espionage case) and R B Sreekumar, a former senior officer of the IB who later on lead a one-man army to implicate Narendra Modi as the prime accused in the 2002 Gujarat riots. It is at this juncture Rajasekharan Nair has come out with another book “CLASSIFIED”, hidden truths in the ISRO spy story. Nair has a new story to tell and that is about Reverse Espionage.
In the new version, he alleges that Glavkosmos (the Russian equivalent of ISRO) backing off from the deal with India to share the cryogenic technology following the pressure exerted on the former by USA led to a clandestine mission between Russia and India to surreptitiously transfer the technology outwitting the watchful eyes of the CIA. What the reader does not understand is the author’s obsession that the transfer of technology was a clandestine and illegal mission. Sir, the deal is between two sovereign governments and not between two corporate groups or individuals! One should not compare how Pakistan acquired the know-how to assemble an Islamic nuclear bomb in 1998 (yes, that was how the Pakistani Generals had termed their mission) to checkmate India’s emergence as a nuclear power. Abdul Quadeer Khan, termed as the Father of Pakistan’s Nuclear Bomb has reportedly stolen the technology from the European Atomic Research Agency to set up a plant for producing Highly Enriched Uranium in his country. Who would believe the story of Pakistan that it was their indigenous technology that contributed in their successful nuclear tests in 1998?
Nair is upset that Nambi Narayanan has been projected as a living martyr by Prime Minister Modi in his speeches. Let us keep politics away from this issue. The CBI officials who were interrogating Nambi Narayanan in 1995 were taken aback when he told them that there never was a cryogenic technology with ISRO to be sold to anybody. Russia, while backing out of the deal to provide cryogenic technology, offered to sell six or seven cryogenic engines to help ISRO to develop their own technology.
India’s experience with GSLV missions is not at all encouraging. The ISRO launched 14 GSLV missions till 2021 out of which eight were successful and six were failures. The space agency claims that only four were failures and two were partial failures. In space science parlour, there are only success and failures while partial failures are rated only as failures. ISRO is still in the process of perfecting the cryogenic engine technology which is capable of placing heavy-duty satellites (those weighing up to 3000Kg) in an orbit which is at an altitude of 36,000 km from earth.
Coming back to Classified, the author delivers a knockout punch with his argument that neither the State nor the CBI are authorised to register cases under the Official Secrets Act. He also questions why the ISRO did not file any case against Nambi Narayanan or Sasikumaran for the alleged espionage case. Nair is very well aware that the competent agency to file a case is the Department of Space under the PMO. The author who writes anything only with the aid of documents and interviews has surprisingly abstained from interviewing Kasturi Rangan who was the ISRO chairman when the espionage case erupted in 1994 and his successor G Madhavan Nair. The latter in his memoirs Agni Pareekshakal (Ordeals with Fire) has ruled out any possibilities of an espionage angle. Nambi Narayanan in his book “Orbit of Memoirs” has given a vivid account of the phase of torture he had to undergo in the name of spy scandal.
Rajasekharan should have focussed on the queries how was it possible to file cases against the scientists for handing over a non-existent technology to some Maldives women and did the Kerala Police that arrested the “accused” could seize any evidence from them about the reported espionage?
While his work Spies from the Space made interesting reading, ‘Classified’, his latest mission, is not as inspiring as the earlier one. Chances are that the work may go haywire, a frequent fate faced by spacecraft when they have to enter the lunar orbit from the earth’s. But Nair has another option; after a few more years he can come out with DECLASSIFIED, as a footnote book to wash off the failures of CLASSIFIED.
Book: CLASSIFIED: Hidden Truths in the ISRO Spy Story
Author: J Rajasekharan Nair
Publication: Srishti Publishers
Rs 350
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