Nambi Narayanan
S. Nambi Narayanan is an Indian scientist and aerospace engineer and Padma Bhushan award winner. As a senior official at the Indian Space Research Organisation, he was in-charge of the cryogenics division. In 1994, he was falsely charged with espionage and arrested. The charges against him were dismissed by the Central Bureau of Investigation in April 1996, and the Supreme Court of India declared him not guilty in 1998.
In 2018, the Supreme Court, through the bench of Dipak Misra, awarded Narayanan a compensation of 5,000,000, to be recovered from the government of Kerala within eight weeks. However the government of Kerala decided to give him 1.3 crore. The apex court also constituted a committee headed by retired Supreme Court judge D. K. Jain to inquire into the role of officials of the Kerala police in the arrest of Narayanan.
He was awarded India's third highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan, in 2019.
Early life
S. Nambi Narayanan was born on 12 December 1941 to Tamil parents in Nagercoil, in present-day Kanyakumari District of Tamil Nadu, where he also completed his schooling. His family traces its roots to Tirukurungudi village in Tirunelveli District of Tamil Nadu.Career
Narayanan first met Vikram Sarabhai, the then Chairman of ISRO, in 1966 at the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station in Thumba, Thiruvananthapuram, while he worked as a payload integrator there. Also chairman of the Space Science and technology Centre at the time, Sarabhai only recruited highly qualified professionals. In pursuit, Narayanan enrolled at the College of Engineering in Thiruvananthapuram for his MTech degree. Upon learning this, Sarabhai offered him leave for higher education if he made it to any of the Ivy League universities. Subsequently, Narayanan earned a NASA fellowship and was accepted into Princeton University in 1969. He completed his master's program there in chemical rocket propulsion under professor :it:Luigi Crocco|Luigi Crocco in a record ten months. Despite being offered a job in the US, Narayanan returned to India with expertise in liquid propulsion at a time when Indian rocketry was still solely dependent on solid propellants.Narayanan introduced the liquid fuel rocket technology in India in the early 1970s, when A. P. J. Abdul Kalam's team was working on solid motors. He foresaw the need for liquid fuelled engines for ISRO's future civilian space programmes, and received encouragement from the then ISRO chairman Satish Dhawan, and his successor U. R. Rao. Narayanan developed liquid propellant motors, first building a successful thrust engine in the mid-1970s and thereafter moving on to bigger engines.
In 1992, India signed an agreement with Russia for transfer of technology to develop cryogenic fuel-based engines and procurement of two such engines for 235 crore. However, it did not materialize after the US president George H. W. Bush wrote to Russia, raising objections against the transfer of technology and even threatening to blacklist the country from the select-five club. Russia, under Boris Yeltsin, succumbed to the pressure and denied the technology to India. To bypass this monopoly, India signed a new agreement with Russia to fabricate four cryogenic engines, alongside two mockups for a total of 9 million, after floating a global tender without a formal transfer of technology. ISRO had already reached a consensus with Kerala Hitech Industries Limited which would have provided the cheapest tender for fabricating engines. But this failed to materialize due to the spy scandal of 1994.
After working for nearly two decades, with French assistance, Narayanan's team developed the Vikas engine used by several ISRO rockets including the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle that took Chandrayaan-1 to the moon in 2008. The Vikas engine is used in the second stage of PSLV and as the second and the four strap-on stages of Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle.
Espionage charges
In 1994, Narayanan was charged with leaking vital defence 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. Narayanan was among two scientists that were accused of selling the secrets for millions. However, his house seemed nothing out of the ordinary and did not show signs of the corrupt gains he was accused of.Narayanan was arrested and spent 48 days in jail. He claims that officials from the Intelligence Bureau, who were the ones to interrogate 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. Muthunayagam, his boss and then Director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre. When he refused to comply, he was tortured until he collapsed and was hospitalised. 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 CBI. They were also dismissed by the Supreme Court in April 1998. In September 1999, the National Human Rights Commission 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 Narayanan were transferred out of Thiruvananthapuram and were given desk jobs.
In 2001, the NHRC ordered the government of Kerala to pay him a compensation of 1 crore. He retired in 2001. The Kerala High Court ordered a compensation amount of Rs 10 lakhs to be paid to Nambi Narayanan based on an appeal from NHRC India on September 2012.
On 3 October 2012, The Hindu reported that the government of Kerala had dropped charges against the police officials who were alleged to have falsely implicated Narayanan in the espionage case on the grounds that over 15 years had passed since the case was initiated. The top officer involved in the case, Siby Mathews, was later appointed Chief Information Commissioner in Kerala.
It was reported on 8 November 2012 that the government of Kerala had not complied with the Kerala High Court order to pay a compensation Rs 10 lakhs.
Demand for Justice
On 7 November 2013, Narayanan pushed for justice in his case, seeking to expose those behind the conspiracy. He says that this case will 'discourage' the youth.On 14 September 2018, the Supreme Court appointed a three-member panel headed by its former judge to probe the "harrowing" arrest and alleged torture of former space scientist Nambi Narayanan in the 'ISRO spy scandal' that turned out to be fake.
A three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra also awarded Mr. Narayanan Rs. 50 lakh in compensation for the "mental cruelty" he suffered all these years. The reprieve comes almost a quarter of century after Mr. Narayanan began his legal battles in various forums for his honour and justice. In addition to this, the government of Kerala has decided to give him Rs 1.3 crore as compensation.
In the media
In October 2018, a biographical film titled , written and co-directed by R. Madhavan, was announced. The teaser of the film was released on 31 October 2018 and the film is scheduled to release in mid-2020.On 26 Jan 2019, he was conferred the Padma Bhushan award by the Government of India.