'International conspiracy' derailed India's indigenous space project: Former ISRO scientist

[INDIAPOSITIVE]

International conspiracy' derailed India's indigenous space project: Former ISRO scientist

Bengaluru: The third and final successful ground test of the indigenous cryogenic engine by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) last Friday has raised hopes of launching the country's first heavy-lift version of the geostationary satellite launch vehicle (GSLV) in December.

The GSLV-Mark-III can carry a payload of four tons, about twice the capacity of ISRO's existing rockets. The C-20 engine that was "hot tested" for 635 seconds at the Liquid Propulsion Complex at Mahendragiri in Tamil Nadu will be used to power the rocket's upper stage. But S. Nambinarayanan, former Project director of ISRO's Liquid Propulsion Systems,


says this milestone could have been crossed 12 years ago had his project not been derailed by an "international conspiracy" to halt India's leap into space. It was Nambinarayanan who introduced the liquid fuel rocket technology in India in the 1980s. The Vikas engine used today by all ISRO launch vehicles, including the one that took Chandrayaan-1 to the moon in 2008 and Mangalyaan, was the result of two decades of work by his team with assistance from France. And, as project director of the newly-launched indigenous cryogenic engine project, he plunged headlong into developing the propulsion systems for ISRO's GSLV and interplanetary missions. With this in mind, in 1991, he signed a contract on behalf of ISRO with the Russian space agency Glavkosmos for the technology transfer of a cryogenic propulsion system.


But things did not turn out as planned. Glavkosmos, in 1993, reneged under pressure from the United States. And Nambinarayanan was arrested on November 1994 on charges of selling India's "rocket secrets to Pakistan through two Maldivian women "spies" leading to his suspension from his job. With Nambinarayanan out of the scene, the cryogenic engine development suffered. "Cancellation of the contract and my arrest were part of an agenda of the US, accomplished by conniving with officials of our Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Kerala Police," Nambinarayanan told this correspondent in an email. As an evidence of conspiracy, he refers to the dismissal of an IB officer of the rank of joint director in 1996 for his alleged links with the CIA. In fact, in 1996, the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI), which took up the "ISRO spy case" found it to be false and fabricated by the IB and the Kerala Police -- a finding endorsed by the Supreme Court in April 1998 and by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in September 1999. The NHRC also passed strictures against the Kerala government for having "tarnished (Nambinarayanan's) long and distinguished career in space research apart from the physical and mental torture to which he and his family were subjected." Nambinarayanan says he managed to obtain the supplies and documents relating to the cryogenic engine from Russia's Glavkosmos before it cancelled the contract and arranged a private airline (Ural Aviation) to transport the cargo to India in four shipments.

"With this, I hoped ISRO could master the cryogenic technology," he said. But his suspension from ISRO's cryogenics systems project put an end to that. "Had there been no conspiracy, ISRO would have achieved space power status long back, maybe as early as 2000," Nambinarayanan told IANS. "Today, we are not only delayed by more than 12 years but have also lost several billion dollars worth of launch business." The rocket scientist feels sad that while the CBI concluded that the ISRO "spy case" was false and fabricated, nobody bothered to unearth the motives behind it or punish those officers of the IB and the Kerala Police who were charged with negligence and dereliction of duty by CBI. "The government should constitute a special investigation team to find out the total truth in the ISRO spy case," he said. While ISRO is celebrating last week's successful "hot test" of its new cryogenic engine, Nambinarayanan, 75, who started this work two decades ago, is now spending much of his time fighting court cases - to get Rs.1 crore (Over $145,000) in damages he had claimed from the state and central governments. He is also seeking action against police officers who framed him and others in a false case that harmed India's space programme.

Read more at: `International conspiracy` derailed India`s indigenous space project:

 

[litman]

good to see conspiracy theories n the other side of the border otherwise we used to think that the whole world is conspiring against pakistan only.

 

[#hydra#]

And those elements got strong support ftom a kerala politician named oommen chandi,the present kerala cm.

 

[jamahir]

so isro is blaming the world for the incompetency of isro's own over-glorified "scientists" and its temple-obsessed chiefs??

come on, the recently started american private company, 'blue origin', has twice flight-tested tested a reusable human-rated rocket that uses "cryogenic" technology engine ( fueled by liquid-oxygen and liquid-hydrogen ), and this company was founded in 2009, six years ago.

and isro was not able to create a reliable "cryogenic" engine in the 12 years after the so-called "international conspiracy"??

and the named scientist, nambinarayanan, was so unjustly hounded[1] by isro and the police :

On 30 November 1994, a team of policemen barged into the house of Dr Nambi Narayanan, a senior scientist with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and said they were taking him into custody. As he got into the police van, Narayanan looked back and saw his wife collapsing on the floor. He couldn’t check on her because he was forced into the vehicle. He thought he was being taken to a police station, but it was to a government guesthouse. There, in a dark room, surrounded by four or five policemen, the interrogation began. For every answer he gave, he was beaten up. Badly. “It continued for three days,” he says.

The ISRO espionage ‘case’ surfaced on 20 November 1994 when a Maldivian woman, Mariam Rasheeda, was arrested from a hotel in Thiruvananthapuram on charges of overstaying after the expiry of her visa. In the days that followed, the story took a startling turn. The police said she was a spy, and not just for one country—she was said to be an intelligence agent for Russia, the ISI and the international rocket technology mafia across the world. Based on her alleged confessions, Narayanan was arrested from his Thiruvananthapuram residence on 30 November.

The police fed the media conspiracy theories about India’s space technology being smuggled out by a network of scientists like Narayanan and spies like Mariam Rasheeda and another Maldivian woman, Fauzia Hassan. No one bothered to verify the handouts, and every morning, Kerala’s newspaper readers woke up to new spicy bits and the lifestyle of Narayanan and others.

The main charge was that Narayanan had sold the technology for cryogenic engines to an agency in Russia through the Maldivian women. He says it was an absurd allegation because even now India has not got the technology. “No mediaperson asked the police how it was possible to sell something we never had,” says Narayanan.

The state government turned the case over to the CBI, which later found that the whole story had been cooked up by the Kerala police. It filed a closure report in a special court in Ernakulam along with a recommendation for action against the police officers who had fabricated the story. By then, the case had taken on political overtones. The then IG, Raman Srivastava, was one of the suspects, and there was enormous pressure on (the late) K Karunakaran, Chief Minister at the time, to take action against the officer. He refused and had to resign after a media campaign alleged he was protecting the accused. It was suspected that rivals in Karunakaran’s own party were behind it. It marked his downfall and he never became Chief Minister again. When the CPM-led LDF government came to power, it withdrew the go-ahead given to the CBI and ordered a reinvestigation. It had made it an issue against the Congress government while in opposition, and once in power couldn’t be seen backtracking. The reinvestigation was approved by the High Court in December 1995. The CBI went to the Supreme Court against it, and in 1998, the apex court quashed the reinvestigation. All the accused were acquitted. In a subsequent order by the National Human Rights Commission, the Government was asked to release Rs 10 lakh to Nambi Narayanan as interim compensation. The Kerala government meanwhile continued the witch-hunt and sought a stay on the NHRC order from the High Court. On 7 September this year, the High Court vacated the stay.

Narayanan is now 71 years old. After 18 years, when he narrates the whole story again, his voice is impersonal but sharp. It still has vigour. During the three days of interrogation, he was not even given a chair to sit. On the second day, he did ask for one. “You don’t deserve a chair in this country, because you are a spy, a traitor to the nation,” an officer told him, he says. “Nothing was more wounding than that,” he recalls. After that, he asked for nothing, not even water to drink. On the third day, he dropped unconscious. The frightened policemen brought a doctor who warned them that Narayanan’s condition was so critical that he could die. “If the interrogation had continued for one more day, I wouldn’t have survived,” he says. After his eventual release, one of the first things he did was go to that doctor and ask him to be a witness on his case of torture. “He said nothing but took a piece of paper and wrote in detail what my condition was when he met me. He put his signature, gave me the paper and said that was all he could do for me. But he said he would not change his statement even if he was intimidated,” says Narayanan.

indian nationalism again triumphing over common sense.

the present status[2] :

By PTI Published: 09th July 2015 01:23 AM Last Updated: 09th July 2015 01:28 AM

NEW DELHI: Former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan, who was discharged in an espionage case, has moved the Supreme Court seeking criminal and disciplinary action against former DGP Siby Mathews and other police officials who were part of Special Investigation Team which had probed the matter.

A bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C Pant will hear tomorrow his appeal against the judgement of the division bench of the Kerala High Court which had said that no action was required to be taken against former DGP and two retired Superintendents of Police, K K Joshua and S Vijayan, who were held responsible by CBI for his illegal arrest. Mathews is currently Kerala Chief Information Commissioner.

and with him out of the scene, what about the thousands of isro's scientists and engineers?? what have they achieved except creating war-mongering spy satellites ( remote sensing satellites )??

what is the status of the 'avatar' space-plane project that was i think originally the idea of a.p.j abdulkalam??


---

[1] Slap a Case, Ruin a Life | OPEN Magazine

[2] ISRO Spy Case: Ex-scientist Nambi Narayanan Moves SC -The New Indian Express

 

[Brickwall]

Hope all those officials who r involved are summarily punished for these

 

[T-72M1]

so isro is blaming the world for the incompetency of isro's own over-glorified "scientists" and its temple-obsessed chiefs??

come on, the recently started american private company, 'blue origin', has tested a reusable human-rated rocket that uses "cryogenic" technology engine ( fueled by liquid-oxygen and liquid-hydrogen ), and this company was founded in 2009, six years ago.

and isro was not able to create a reliable "cryogenic" engine in the 12 years after the so-called "international conspiracy"??

and the named scientist, nambinarayanan, was so unjustly hounded[1] by isro and the police :





indian nationalism again triumphing over common sense.


the present status[2] :



and with him out of the scene, what about the thousands of isro's scientists and engineers?? what have they achieved except creating war-mongering spy satellites ( remote sensing satellites )??

what is the status of the 'avatar' space-plane project that was i think originally the idea of a.p.j abdulkalam??


---

[1] Slap a Case, Ruin a Life | OPEN Magazine

[2] ISRO Spy Case: Ex-scientist Nambi Narayanan Moves SC -The New Indian Express

and col Gaddaffi's jamahiryan space program was so much better, everyone got a free ride to the moon and back.

 

[Brickwall]

and with him out of the scene, what about the thousands of isro's scientists and engineers?? what have they achieved except creating war-mongering spy satellites ( remote sensing satellites )??

What do you think those satellites be better used for creating water holes in libya ...

 

[jamahir]

and col Gaddaffi's jamahiryan space program was so much better, everyone got a free ride to the moon and back.

no.

but i do know that 400 indian vyomanonauts are presently working on a big moon base that is called gangotri.

What do you think those satellites be better used for creating water holes in libya ...

isn't finding water in the libyan desert a lot better than isro getting a satellite made by israel for the express purpose of spying on pakistan and china??

 

[Brickwall]

isn't finding water in the libyan desert a lot better than isro getting a satellite made by israel for the express purpose of spying on pakistan and china??

India has adequate satellites for Civilian purpose, we require more in terms of military.

Also will you similarly criticize North Korea for attempting to launch satellite

 

[jamahir]

India has adequate satellites for Civilian purpose, we require more in terms of military.

india has a disproportionately large military program and was recently declared ( again ) the largest importer of armaments and military systems in the world.

what for, when india doesn't need defending but radical change inside?? i have detailed this in many a thread so will not want this thread to become something else.

Also will you similarly criticize North Korea for attempting to launch satellite

if i could, i would ask north korea to get russia to include north korea in the 'international space station' program.

secondly, since you reference spy satellite, we must remember that north korea ( dprk ) has been a victim of nato imperialist aggression for 60 years !! nato, under the umbrella-excuse of uno, invaded north korea in the korea war and killed four million north koreans !! the western governments cry about six million jews supposedly killed by the german nazi system in the 40's... you can be arrested in the west if you question the six million number... yet the western governments and their stooges get their media to brainwash people to forget the four million north korean dead.

still, north korea doesn't have a imperialist military but has a defensive one.

where i would criticize north korea is in its lessened support since the 90's years for socialist internationalism.

 

[Brickwall]

india has a disproportionately large military program and recently declared ( again ) the largest importer of armaments and military systems in the world.

what for, when india doesn't need defending but radical change inside?? i have detailed this in many a thread so will not want this thread to become something else.

Yes thank for your discourse, will ask the Indian Army ,Navy and Aiforce to donate their weapons and start using sticks. Infact i would like to know what exactly is appropriate military program, keeping the 2-3 security guards at border ?

if i could, i would ask north korea to get russia to include north korea in the 'international space station' program.

Next ask UN to include them in security council with veto power.

we must remember that north korea ( dprk ) has been a victim of nato imperialist aggression for 60 years !! nato, under the umbrella-excuse of uno, invaded north korea in the korea war and killed four million north koreans !!

Your right here , Indians is being showered with flowers and cakes by their neighbors, we live in such as peaceful neighborhood .

where i would criticize north korea is in its lessened support since the 90's years for socialist internationalism

You should appreciate them for making beautiful country into mess

 

[Brahmaputra Mail]

vyomanonauts

It's Antrix (Antariksh) Purush not Vyomanonauts

 

[Indika]

good to see conspiracy theories n the other side of the border otherwise we used to think that the whole world is conspiring against pakistan only.

Its not a conspiracy thats the truth. They not only sabotaged the program but also prevent tech transfer from Russia.

india has a disproportionately large military program and recently declared ( again ) the largest importer of armaments and military systems in the world.

what for, when india doesn't need defending but radical change inside?? i have detailed this in many a thread so will not want this thread to become something else.



if i could, i would ask north korea to get russia to include north korea in the 'international space station' program.

secondly, since you reference spy satellite, we must remember that north korea ( dprk ) has been a victim of nato imperialist aggression for 60 years !! nato, under the umbrella-excuse of uno, invaded north korea in the korea war and killed four million north koreans !! the western governments cry about six million jews supposedly killed by the german nazi system in the 40's... you can be arrested in the west if you question the six million number... yet the western governments and their stooges get their media to brainwash people to forget the four million north korean dead.

still, north korea doesn't have a imperialist military but has a defensive one.

where i would criticize north korea is in its lessened support since the 90's years for socialist internationalism.

If you could contribute some thing usefull instead of usual ranting. We should be worried about our own state of affairs rather than rolling on the ground for what is happening in rest of the world.

 

[911]

@jamahir Isn't it funny that USA becomes good and bad for you on selective occasions.

Similar conspiracy theories for nuclear scientists

 

[jamahir]

Yes thank for your discourse, will ask the Indian Army ,Navy and Aiforce to donate their weapons and start using sticks. Infact i would like to know what exactly is appropriate military program, keeping the 2-3 security guards at border ?

why can't the 'border security force' ( bsf ) and the 'coast guard' and the internal police be combined and enlarged and be charged with security of india, having been given ships, boats, helicopter gunships etc??

Next ask UN to include them in security council with veto power.

the entire 'security council' ( where veto powers are used ) must be abolished... watch the below speech by muammar gaddafi in the uno general assembly in 2009 in which he says that the 'security council' is undemocratic ( because most of the uno members don't have a say in it on things that concern the world ) and it is often used to impose illegal and unjust wars ( by the nato bloc ) therefore making it really a 'terrorist council'... the speech is long and is one of the best speeches ever :

Muammar Gaddafi Speech To United Nations. September 23, 2009 (Full) - YouTube

Your right here , Indians is being showered with flowers and cakes by their neighbors, we live in such as peaceful neighborhood .

so let us work towards the eventual reunification of south asia and ideological cooperation with the communist party of china.

what's the problem??

You should appreciate them for making beautiful country into mess

my thread from may 2015 :

30 best panoramas of north korea