ISRO spy case is much more nail biting than the recent box office hit ‘VIKRAM’ with twists and turns embedded with the much needed juicy contents for a success! But Madhavan has proved to be no Kamala Hassan.

The story starts with two Maldivian ladies landing in Trivandrum airport – Fauziyya seeking a school admission for her fourteen-year-old daughter Zila Hamdi and Mariam for treatment of her heart condition, exploring also the possibility of getting her eleven-year-old daughter Nisha, educated here. At the airport, the customs officer extracted $100 from Mariyam. The Maldivian kept cribbing about the ‘extortion’ when she was overheard by a co-passenger, K. Chandrasekhar, a Bangalore-based Indian representative for Russian space agency Glavkosmos. Playing the hero and trying to help a damsel in distress, Chandrasekhar quarreled with the customs officer and got back the money for Mariam. He struck a conversation with a thankful Mariam who tried to take as much advantage of the helping hand as possible. She told him of her heart and the school admission problems. Chandrasekhar promised to deliver on everything. In Bangalore, he took Mariam to meet his friend S K Sharma who was also a labour contractor. Sharma’s uncle K L Bhasin was a retired brigadier, an influential person who could be tapped for the school admission. Bhasin and Sharma met Chandrasekhar and Mariam at a club in Bangalore where Sharma promised to get admission for Fauziyya’s daughter. As for a doctor for Mariam, Chandrasekhar suggested the name of wife of Sasikumaran, who is a colleague of Dr Nambhi in ISRO! Later Sasikumaran met Mariam. In Bangalore, Mariam Rasheeda stayed with Fauziyya at Sara Palani’s house where Fauziyya was a paying guest. As Fauziyya Hassan was having difficulty in getting admission for her daughter in a good school, and the schools were demanding high capitation fees, Fauziyya and Rasheeda met Chandrasekhar at his office on 21 June. Chandrasekhar asked S K Sharma, a labour contractor in Bangalore, for help since Sharma knew the husband of the principal of Baldwin Girls School.

Mariam Rasheeda and Fauziyya Hassan as early as 14 October 1994, approached one inspector Vijayan for getting permission for stay beyond ninety days. When Vijayan made sexual advances to her, She snubbed him. She even mentioned the Brigadier friend but as ‘IG’ to keep the inspector away, but in vain. On 20 October 1994 arrested her under the Foreigners Act and lodged a complaint with Vanchiyoor Police Station.

‘Thaniniram’ a local evening daily reported Mariam’s arrest on 20 October 1994. Deshabhimani, the CPI(M) mouthpiece reported it the next day, bringing in the espionage angle! Vijayan, who had discussed the ‘offensive strategy’ with Trivandrum city police commissioner V R Rajeevan, had by now made a valuable discovery that Mariam was a private for the Maldivian National Security Service! This was the genesis of the word ‘spy’ in the Desbhabhimani story, and later in the case itself. In the following days, Kerala Kaumudi came out with an ‘exclusive’ linking I G, Raman Srivastava with the spy ring as Mariam has mentioned wrongly ‘IG’ in her investigation!

In his book ‘Spies from Space: The ISRO Frame-up’, Rajasekharan Nair explains the Malayalam daily’s motive in fixing Srivastava who evicted its editor M S Mani from the office, following a court order on a family feud. This case came as a shot in the arm for the ‘Oommen Chandy-led Antony’ faction of the Congress to hit at Chief Minister K Karunakaran. The faction constituted a crack team that kept feeding Malayalam journalists’ imaginary tales of the spy case. Srivastava was suspended later, following adverse remarks by the Kerala High Court (which was later chided by the Supreme Court), and Karunakaran lost his chair. Those were two victories for two minor players who were not aware of this case being dragged into a bigger conspiracy, which was being hatched by some foreign hands to delay, if not prevent, India from entering the commercial satellite launch market. With Vijayan finding the names of ISRO scientist Sasikumaran in Mariam’s diary, the stage was set to link the arrested women with the space organisation.

The IB had already interrogated Mariam and Fauziyya, and evidently formed an opinion that spying had happened, though they had no evidence of it. In fact, the first Unofficial (UO) note the IB had sent to the higher ups said that no espionage had happened. A second UO note, said spying appeared to have taken place. A third UO note, after IB could not gather any evidence to substantiate their theory, said it was all a combination of truth, half-truths and lies.

As the newspapers went to town with the spy women’s links with ISRO scientist Sasikumaran, ISRO transferred him to Satellites Application Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad on 5 November 1994.

Behind this transfer move was one Sengupta, an IAS officer in the space department with whom Sasikumaran had a tiff earlier. In a review meeting, the bureaucrat had chided Sasikumaran, saying he did not understand administration. Sasikumaran, for his part, retorted that he as an IAS man did not understand technology! Now, with his name linked to Mariam Rasheeda, Sengupta made haste to impress upon the ISRO chairman to sign on the dotted line to transfer Sasikumaran. On 9 November 1994 the day Sasikumaran joined SAC, Ahmedabad, Fauziyya Hassan was arrested in Bangalore and brought to Trivandrum. The next day, IB joint director M K Dhar came from Delhi to Trivandrum, marking a turning point in the case. It was on this day that the IB claimed to have got the first ‘confession statement’ from Fauziyya about espionage. The mention of Sashikumaran’s name in the case diary fortified the linkages. On 13 November 1994, Mariam and Fauziyya were now charged with espionage.

With newspapers going overboard with spy tales, the Kerala Police held internal meetings and decided on 14 November 1994 to hand over the investigation to the CBI. But IB was against the idea. The next day the Kerala DGP constituted a Special investigation Team (SIT) headed by DIG Sibi Mathews to investigate the case. By now IB men were torturing the accused to extract ‘confessions’.

On 21 November 1994, Sasikumaran was arrested in Ahmedabad, and Chandrasekhar was picked up in Bangalore. On the same day, IB sent an unofficial (UO) note to the highest authorities in Delhi, to book the accused under Official Secrets Act and implicate Ravinder Reddy of MTAR and Prabhakar Rao in the case. These moves were to tighten the noose around ISRO, and prepare ground for Nambhi’s arrest. The first indication of dragging him into the plot came on 28 November 1994, when Kerala Kaumudi published a false report that he was under house arrest. On this day, the IB sent another UO note recommending that Raman Srivastava may be questioned. Two days later, Nambhi was arrested.

So what urged IB Joint Director M K Dhar to rush to Trivandrum? It was part of his counter-intelligence operations against Pakistan, argues the IB officer. He mentions about Ratan Sehgal in the initial phase of the investigation, but took upon himself the task of being the prime fabricator of the ISRO spy case.

The timing of the implication of ISRO makes it a suspect on at least two counts: One, when Dhar came to Trivandrum, the countdown for the launch of PSLV-D2 rocket was about to begin. Even as he was questioning Mariam Rasheeda and Fauziyya Hassan, on 15 October 1994, PSLV-D2 put in orbit Indian Remote Sensing Satellite IRS-P2. It was the first successful launch of an Indian rocket that could be used for commercial satellite launches. Two, ISRO was in the process of bringing materials and drawings as part of a cryogenic technology transfer from Russia after the US imposed sanctions on Russia and India. Owing to the pressure from the US, Glavkosmos wanted to cancel the contract, but ISRO had succeeded in advancing some milestones and making payments before the new clauses kicked in.

It was quite an achievement for India to have skirted the US pressure to bring home the cryogenic consignments. ISRO managed, much to the chagrin of the US, to get the Russian Ural Airlines to bring the voluminous documents and hardware to India. Of the four scheduled consignments from Moscow, three had landed in Trivandrum between 23 January and 17 July 1994. The last one was to come in December 1994. Someone wanted the head of the cryogenic mission arrested as part of the plot. The project had be stalled. So a ISRO spy case was fabricated.

M K Dhar was to retire by the beginning of 1995, a few months after Mariam Rasheeda was arrested. It is also on record that Dhar had made some desperate attempts to get his official date of birth ‘corrected’ so that he could get an extension of service. When a senior officer nearing retirement is handling a sensitive case, it is usual for the government to give him an extension beyond superannuation to complete the assignment. Dhar had tried in vain to weave a story of a Pakistan conspiracy by arresting a Muslim religious leader in a northern state, but when the government was convinced of the leader’s background and standing, Dhar had to eat a humble pie. It is at this juncture he saw the potential of the ISRO spy case.

Dhar’s observations on rocketry and ‘the plot’ in his book show either he was ignorant of how rocket technology is transferred or if he had some basic understanding, he was fabricating the ISRO spy case, ostensibly on someone’s orders!

That the IB was penetrated by the US became clear when Dhar’s colleague Ratan Sehgal was sacked as the IB joint director and charges of having nine ‘unauthorized and clandestine’ meetings with CIA station chief in Delhi, Timoty Long, and his deputy Susan Brown between 19 September and 31 October 1996. The investigation found that the meetings happened in Sehgal’s house in Bharati Nagar and in the parking lot of Ambassador Hotel, both in Delhi. Counter intelligence officers reported evidence of Sehgal having received a ‘large packet’ from Ms August, a former deputy station chief of the CIA, outside Ambassador Hotel. Sehgal was asked to face prosecution or put in his papers. He chose voluntary retirement. It is strange that the ISRO spy case started a few months after Sehgal joined the IB from the Ministry of External Affairs and ended around the same time he was chucked out of the IB.

Some people were clearly not happy also with India flying its first satellite launch vehicle; they knew India would barge into the commercial satellite launch market with high competent prices (as less as half an American launch) if it acquired cryogenic technology. Then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao put it mildly during a discussion in the Parliament, indicating the ‘involvement of a foreign country’ in thwarting the Russian cryogenic contract.

Six respectable people—Satish Dhawan, T N Seshan, U R Rao, Yash Pal, R Narasimha and S Chandrashekar—had this to say in an open letter after the Kerala Government ordered ‘further investigation’ in the case even after the Chief Judicial Magistrate had accepted the CBI report and absolved all the accused of the charges: ‘The “espionage case” reveals that the country’s space programme or for that matter other strategic programmes, may no longer be immune to outside interference.’

The unanswered riddle is “why was Nambhi implicated in the ‘non-existent’ spy case? To bewilder and disband the cryogenic team? Are the IB officers pawns or active foot soldiers in this interested party’s international board game? It will be tough to say ‘no’ if you look at the systematic way in which the US imposed sanctions to scuttle the cryogenic technology transfer from Russia to India only two years earlier, and the way in which Dhar and a few other IB officers decided on the espionage angle, even before they started investigation. The way those in power (including the minister whom Nambhi met during this period) turned blind eye to the whole fiasco is an indication that no one would like the truth to become public. We are not that ‘sovereign’ after all! Patriotism aka nationalism is only for the ordinary citizens and not for those sitting in seat of power!

Dhar’s book “Open Secrets: India’s Intelligence Unveiled ” published in 2005, self-righteousness, lies and bravado, claims Nambhi. In that book, in an attempt to give his arguments a façade of credibility, Dhar makes a suggestion. A joint investigation agency should be formed with representatives from the IB, CBI, R&AW and the ISRO to have a detailed look into the evidences and documents for arriving at a final conclusion. There is no harm if this reinvestigation is carried out silently and out of the glare of the media.

Dhar did not live to see such an investigation. He died in May 2012. Now, on his suggestion for a joint investigation of all the top agencies to expose the real conspiracy. Would it happen? Or would it just stop with financial compensation to Dr Nambhi Narayanan and Padma award?

Till then, Mr Dhar, RIP.

Credits:

1. Ready to Fire: How India and I survived the ISRO spy case – Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd

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