The Nambi Effect - The story of ISRO spy case.



Today India and its people are very proud of its national space agency - ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) and they should be because what ISRO is achieving today was unimaginable 20-25 years ago. Then, ISRO was dependent on other countries like USA, France, Russia for space equipments and other technologies which were very costly. These countries never used to share the formula or the technology behind these equipments and as a result ISRO had to pay a hefty amount to buy these items. 

Finally ISRO started thinking about making its own Made in India cryogenic engine. A deal was signed with Russia regarding this and deal was almost final but USA and France intervened and pressurized Russia to cancel this deal with ISRO because USA was getting million dollars from ISRO for these space equipments and hence, didn't wanted India to make its own engine. Pressurized Russia changed its plan and came to an agreement that it will provide India 4 engine but will not share the technology behind it.  After this announcement, different Indian companies started bidding for these 4 engines and at last, Kerala HiTech Industries Limited won the bid.

ISRO's work used to get delayed due to lack of funds and their cost were very high. Then there comes the scientist Mr. Nambi Narayanan who told that he is working on making a cryogenic in India itself. ISRO approved this idea and made Nambi Narayanan the head of this project. 

In October 1994, Kerala Police arrested two Maldivian ladies - Mariam Rasheeda and Fauzia Hassan in Thiruvananthapuram. According to the police, Rasheeda was involved in selling the secret technology of cryogenic engine on which Narayanan and his team was working to different countries including India's neighbor Pakistan. In November 1994, Nambi Narayanan and two other scientists - D.Sasikumaran and K.Chandrasekhar (Indian representative of a Russian space agency) were also arrested by Kerala Police. 

Now the media started covering this news. Before any kind of judgement and final hearing the media gave Narayanan the tag of a traitor for allegedly selling the technology to other countries. He was now seen as a villain by his own countrymen.

IB (Intelligence Bureau) of India got involved in this matter. Nambi Narayanan accuses two officer of IB that they forced him to implicate A.E.Muthunayagam, his boss. When he refused to do so, he was tortured until he collapsed and was hospitalized. He had one complaint against ISRO that the organization was not supporting him in these tough times. In 1994 only, the case was handed over to CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) but till then Narayanan was already given the tag of a traitor. His relatives, neighbors no one stood in his support.


In April 1996, CBI files a report in a Lower Court of Kerala which said that Nambi Narayanan, the other two scientists, Rasheeda and Fauzia Hassan were not involved in any kind of espionage case. In fact, the whole story was false. CBI got no evidence to back the charges. The court accepted the CBI's report and released all the accused in this matter.

The state government challenged this CBI report and decided to conduct re-investigation of this case by the Kerala Police. K.Chandrasekhar challenged this order but the Kerala High Court dismissed this challenge. After this notification went to the Supreme Court of India who denied the re-enquiry of this case. Supreme Court even awarded the compensation of ₹1 Lakh. This was the year 1998 when Nambi Narayanan and the other scientists were finally free from all the allegations.

In April 1999, Nambi Narayanan approached National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) claiming compensation from state government for the mental agony and torture suffered by him. NHRC asks the state government to pay the compensation of ₹10 Lakh but this order was challenged by the government. In September 2012, the High Court directs the state to pay ₹10 Lakhs to Mr. Narayanan.

Nambi Narayan also went to Kerala High Court demanding a strict action against the three officers - Siby Matthews, K.K.Joshua and S.Vijaya who falsely created this story and degraded his image in front of the whole nation. Even the CBI report had mentioned there name. High court decided to leave this to the state government to consider the CBI report or not for taking disciplinary actions against these police officers.

Nambi Narayan went on for a long 17 year old fight. By 2017, Narayanan was 68 years old. He would have retired from his job if he would have been still working in ISRO but he didn't gave up and filed a petition in the supreme court for taking actions against the police officers who created this story on their own.

In April 2017, the supreme court begins the hearing in this case. The three-judge bench comprising of the then Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra, Justice A.M.Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y.Chandrachud awarded Mr. Narayanan a compensation of ₹75 lakhs and asked to restore his reputation by destroying all the fake records and stories of Nambi Narayanan and his team. 

If all these things would not have happened with Nambi Narayanan then India would have developed it own cryogenic engine by the year 1999. The Vikas engine, the cryogenic engine which was developed in the year 2008 was also made by the technology on which Nambi Narayanan was working.

"Theory" behind why Police did this?

The story behind this reason is that when USA made Russia to cancel the deal, it still had fear of losing those million dollars because the Nambi Narayanan was working on that and USA didn't wanted Nambi Narayanan to get successful in this project. CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) indulged in planning something to delay or stop this project. They contacted some political figures in Kerala government and then those political people involved Kerala Police in this plan to delay Narayanan's project. After that police arrested Mariam Rasheeda and created this false story

In 2019, the Government of India awarded Nambi Narayanan Padma Bhushan (India's third highest civilian order). This is the respect a scientist should get who rejected NASA's offer and chose to work for his nation's development.

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