Nambi Narayanan

S. Nambi Narayanan was a former head at the Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO). At the time, Nambi Narayanan was in-charge of the overall cryogenic project.^[1] In 1994, he was falsely charged with espionage.

It was Narayanan who introduced the liquid fuel rocket technology in India in the early 1970s while A. P. J. Abdul Kalam’s team worked on solid motors. Narayanan foresaw the need for liquid fuelled engines for ISRO’s future civilian space programmes. He was encouraged by the then ISRO chairman Satish Dhawan and his successor U.R. Rao. Narayanan developed liquid propellant motors, first building the successful 600-kg thrust engine in the mid-1970s and thereafter moving on to bigger engines.

After working for nearly two decades, with French assistance, his team developed the Vikas engine used today by all ISRO rockets including the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle(PSLV) that took Chandrayaan-1 to the moon on Oct 22, 2008.

The Vikas engine is used in the second stage of PSLV and as the second and the four strap-on stages of Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).^[2]

He has since retired in 2001.

Charges against Narayanan

In 1994, Narayanan was charged with leaking vital defense secrets to two alleged Maldivian intelligence officers, Mariam Rasheeda and Fauzia Hassan. Defense officials said the secrets pertained to highly confidential ."flight test data" from experiments with rocket and satellite launches

Nambi Narayanan, was among two scientists (the other being D Sasikumaran) that were accused of selling ISRO secrets for millions. He was charged with the leaking of vital defence secrets to two Maldivian intelligence officers, Mariam Rasheeda and Fauzia Hassan. Defence officials said the secrets were related to confidential flight test data from rocket launches. However, his house seemed nothing of the ordinary and did not show signs of the opulence he was accused of stolen.^[3]

Narayanan spent 50 days in jail. He says that the Intelligence Bureau officials who interrogated him wanted him to make false accusations against the top brass of ISRO. He alleges that two IB officials had asked him to implicate A E Muthunanakom, his boss and then Director of the Liquid Propulsion System Centre (LPSC). When he refused to comply, he was tortured until he collapsed and was hospitalised.^[4] He says his main complaint against ISRO is that it did not support him. Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, who was ISRO chairman at the time stated that ISRO could not interfere in a legal matter.

In May 1996, The charges were dismissed as phony by the Central Bureau of Investigation. They were also dismissed by the Supreme court of India in April 1998. In September 1999, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) passed strictures against the government of Kerala for having damaged Narayanan’s distinguished career in space research along with the physical and mental torture to which he and his family were subjected.

After the dismissal of charges against them, the two scientists, Sasikumar and Nambi Narayanan have since been transferred out of Thiruvananthapuram and been given desk jobs.^[5]

Narayanan is now fighting court cases to get Rs.1 million from the Kerala state government that the NHRC ordered to be paid as interim relief and Rs.10 million in damages he had claimed from the state and central government.

References

1. ^ http://rehendhi.tripod.com/spicegirls/id3.html
2. ^ http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/sci-tech/unsung-hero-of-moon-mission-is-sad-but-forgiving_100226418.html
3. ^ http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/may/08isro.htm
4. ^ http://www.expressindia.com/news/ie/daily/19990103/0035021.html
5. ^ http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?204019

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Name	Narayanan, Nambi
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