Nambi Narayanan, an Indian aerospace scientist born on December 12th, 1941, worked for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and made a significant contribution to the Indian space program by creating the Vikas rocket engine. He oversaw the group that obtained French technology for the Vikas engine, which was used in India’s first PSLV launch. He oversaw the cryogenics division as a senior official at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). In March 2019, he received the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian honor in India.
He was wrongfully accused of involvement in espionage in 1994, detained, and subjected to physical abuse while being held. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) found the accusations against him to be unfounded in April 1996, and the Kerala government’s investigation was halted on technical grounds by the Supreme Court of India. Narayanan received a 50 lakh rupee compensation from the Supreme Court in 2018, through the bench of Dipak Misra (equivalent to 57 lakh rupees or US$71,000 in 2020). The Keralan government decided to give him an additional 1.3 crore (which would be worth 1.5 crore or US$190,000 in 2020). In July 2022, R. Madhavan’s biopic Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, which is based on his life, was released.
Early years and personal life
On December 12, 1941, Nambi Narayanan was born into a Tamil Hindu family in Nagercoil, the former princely state of Travancore (current Kanyakumari District). Higher Secondary School in Nagercoil is where he received his education. At the Thiagarajar College of Engineering in Madurai, he earned his Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering. In Madurai, where he was pursuing his degree, Narayanan lost his father. His sisters number two. As soon as his father died his mother fell sick. Nambi has two children with Meena Nambi, whom he married. Their son, Shankar Nambi, is a businessman. Their daughter Geetha Arunan is a Montessori educator in Bangalore and is wed to Padma Shri-winning ISRO scientist and Mars Orbiter Mission director Subbiah Arunan.
Nambi Narayanan Career
Narayanan began working for ISRO in 1966 as a technical assistant at the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station after completing his mechanical engineering studies in Madurai. In 1969, the government paid for his deputation to Princeton University. Professor Luigi Crocco oversaw his master’s degree program there in chemical rocket propulsion. At a time when Indian rocketry was still entirely dependent on solid propellants, he returned to India with knowledge of liquid propulsion. In his book, he asserted that he had to introduce Sarabhai to liquid propulsion technology.
In exchange for 100 man-years of engineering work from ISRO, Societe Europeenne de Propulsion agreed to transfer the Viking engine technology in 1974. Three teams worked together to complete this transfer, and Narayanan oversaw the group of 52 engineers who were responsible for acquiring French technology. Two additional teams worked on setting up the development facilities in Mahendragiri and indigenizing the hardware in India. Testing of the first engine, Vikas successfully in 1985. The Vigilance Cell’s 1982 investigation was later abandoned. As the commandant of the Central Industrial Security Force unit stationed at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, R. B. Sreekumar looked into a claim that Narayanan had manipulated money. He submitted a request for a voluntary resignation in 1994, one month before Kerala police detained him.
He received the Padma Bhushan award from the Indian government on January 26, 2019, for creating the Vikas rocket engine.
False espionage charges
A team of Kerala police and Intelligence Bureau officials detained Narayanan on November 30, 1994, as part of an investigation into alleged espionage. Their reasoning was based on a colleague’s videotaped admission that he and Narayanan had been paid for sending designs and documents for rocket engines to two Maldivian women, Mariam Rasheeda and Fauziyya Hassan, who were thought to be spies. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was criticized for taking on the case in December 1994 by Kerala’s opposition parties and the media. P. V. Narasimha Rao, then-Prime Minister of India, was perceived to control the CBI, and some of the individuals named in the investigation were close to Rao and K. Karunakaran, then-Chief Minister of Kerala.
Narayanan was imprisoned for 50 days. He asserts that the Intelligence Bureau agents who initially questioned him wanted him to level unfounded allegations against the ISRO leadership. A. E. Muthunayagam was his boss and the Director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) at the time, and he claims that two IB officials asked him to accuse him. He claims that when he refused to do so, he was tortured until he passed out and had to be hospitalized. He claims that the lack of support he received from ISRO is his main grievance. At the time, ISRO chairman K. Kasturirangan said that the organization couldn’t get involved in a legal dispute. When he explained to the CBI director that the drawings of rockets and engines were not classified, the director expressed his surprise at how far the case had progressed and apologized. He has written that the CBI director Vijaya Rama Rao met him in jail on December 8 (four days after the case was transferred).
Before the 1996 general election in India, the CBI submitted a closure report in April 1996, claiming that there had been no espionage and that the suspects’ testimonies had been coerced through torture. After viewing the interrogation videos, the Kerala High Court previously dismissed claims of torture and criticized the CBI for failing to pursue all possible leads in a related case. The Kerala government revoked the prior authorization given to CBI to investigate the case and ordered the Kerala police to take it up again in light of attention on gaps in the CBI closure report, a challenge of the report in the Kerala High Court by S. Vijayan, a police officer, and ongoing political pressure. However, a Supreme Court panel stopped it in April 1998, stating that “the CBI found that no case had been made out,” and ordered the Kerala government to pay each of the defendants (including Narayanan) Rs. 1 lakh (3.8 lakh or US$4,800 in 2020). The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) imposed sanctions on the Keralan government in September 1999 for having jeopardized Narayanan’s illustrious career in space research and the physical and psychological abuse he and his family endured. The two scientists, Sasikumar and Narayanan, were transferred out of Thiruvananthapuram and given desk jobs following the dismissal of the charges brought against them.
In 2001, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) ordered the Keralan government to pay him one crore rupees ($420,000 in 2020) in compensation. He left his job in 2001. Based on an appeal from NHRC India in September 2012, the Kerala High Court mandated that Nambi Narayanan receive compensation in the amount of 10 lakh (equivalent to 16 lakh or US$20,000 in 2020).
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) brought up the case and Narayanan’s treatment, particularly by Sreekumar, in its campaign for the 2014 Indian general election following a meeting between Narendra Modi and Narayanan in Thiruvananthapuram.
The Supreme Court established a panel on September 14th, 2018, to investigate Narayanan’s “harrowing” arrest and purported torture. A three-judge panel chaired by Chief Justice Dipak Misra also gave Narayanan 50 lakh as compensation for the “mental cruelty” he endured for all these years (equivalent to 57 lakh or US$71,000 in 2020). In the same month, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a BJP lawmaker at the time, suggested Narayanan for the Padma awards. In January 2019, Modi claimed that awarding Nambi Narayanan the Padma Bhushan was “an honor for his government.” In a rally in Thiruvananthapuram, Modi questioned the crowd, “I hope you are aware what the Congress has done to Kerala’s own scientist Nambi Narayan.” The case and the Padma award were discussed during the BJP’s campaign for the 2019 Indian general election.
Nambi Narayanan Recent developments
The Kerala government agreed to pay 1.3 crore (US$160,000) in 2021 to resolve the lawsuit that Narayanan had brought against it.
The Supreme Court of India ordered the CBI to look into whether police officers were involved in the conspiracy on April 14, 2021. In petitions submitted to various Keralan courts by a number of the involved police officers, numerous documents demonstrating the transfer of lands by Narayanan to various CBI investigators between 2004 and 2008 were produced. One of the requests for an investigation into the land deals was denied by the Kerala High Court. Although the petitioners were given permission to file a new case with better sale records, it was stated that the documents provided were insufficient proof.
Awards
- March 2019: Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian award.
Books
- Ormakalude Bhramanapadham: An Autobiography by Nambi Narayanan, Prajesh Sen; Thrissur Current Books, 2017.
- Ready To Fire: How India and I Survived the ISRO Spy Case by Nambi Narayanan, Arun Ram; Bloomsbury India, 2018.
Filmography
- In December 2012, he acted as a professor in a documentary, Mizhineerkayal, about the Alleppey–Kuttanad backwaters.
In July 2022, a biographical film was made titled Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, written, directed by R. Madhavan, who also played the titular role of Narayanan.
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