M G Radhakrishnan
. Raj Chengappa
November 30, 1999
UPDATED: November 22, 2013 19:55 IST
When S. Nambinarayanan, 53, was arrested in Trivandrum last fortnight as a suspect in the espionage case that has rocked the country's space establishment, the panic was palpable.
For, as head of the Rs 350-crore cryogenic engine project of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), he was privy to some of its most sensitive secrets. And since he had also worked with some of the country's missile scientists in the past, he could have penetrated the country's defence research units too.
With his arrest, the spy scandal that broke out last month threatened to assume alarming dimensions. He was the fifth suspect to be taken into custody by the Kerala Police in the past two months.
Weeks earlier, D. Sasikumaran, a deputy Project Director in ISRO's cryogenic unit, K. Chandrasekharan, a Bangalore-based businessman, and two Maldivian women, Mariam Rasheeda and Fauzia Hassan, had been taken into custody. A day after Nambinarayanan's arrest, S.D. Sharma, another Bangalore-based businessman who supplied steel to ISRO, was arrested.
The scandal: an update
S. Nambinarayanan
Deputy Director, LPSC, ISRO
In charge of the Rs 350-crore project to build cryogenic engines. Has been wanting to quit his job for the past two years. Hasn't revealed much to investigators. His motive yet to be established.
D. Sasikumaran
Senior scientist, LPSC
Investigators discovered a suitcase full of title deeds and blue-chip shares in his house. Mariam says he was paid in dollars for space secrets he sold.
R. Mariam
Maldivian citizen
Claims to be a double agent working for pro-Gayoom supporters. A private in the National Security Service, she was said to be the mistress of a high-ranking official in the organisation. Barring a diary containing a record of all the Male militants she had met in India, no space documents found in her possession. Had run out of money when police nabbed her in Trivandrum.
Fauzia Hassan
Maldivian citizen
Is closely related to a shipping magnate in Male. Daughter has links with Habib Bank, run by Pakistanis in Male. Son, who studied in Delhi, suspected of ISI links. Had enough time to cover her tracks before being arrested. Is a seasoned spy.
K. Chandrasekharan
Consultant
May have funnelled Russian and Indian space secrets to European and US space agencies. ISRO denies he brokered the Glavkosmos deal to supply cryogenic engines.
Vikas Engine
Made by ISRO
ISI may have wanted to buy its designs for a missile to be built by a consortium of Muslim countries. The US and France may have been spying on ISRO's vulnerable areas.
With the case assuming both national and international ramifications, the Kerala Government asked the CBI to take over.
With opposition parties such as the BJP raising the issue in Parliament, CBI Director K. Vijayarama Rao even flew to Trivandrum to make an on-the-spot assessment. Back in Delhi, Rao said: "We are confident of completing the investigations very soon."
There are not many who share his sense of confidence. A month-and-a-half after the spy ring was broken, the key questions about the scandal remain unanswered.
Investigating agencies and the defence and space departments are still unsure about how much information was really leaked out, how extensive the network was, how long it had been operating, which countries had funded the operation and for what reasons.
Officially, the view was that the breach was not as serious as was earlier believed. And that it would not pose any setback for either the space or defence research establishments. Coming after a series of sensational disclosures, however, such assertions seemed part of a government damage-control exercise.
Much of the ambiguity is a result of the lack of swift action after the Special Branch of the Kerala Police made a breakthrough by arresting Mariam, the Maldivian moll in the spy ring, on October 20. It enabled the key suspects to cover their tracks.
Although her involvement with Sasikumaran had been suspected right from the beginning, it took a fortnight for the IB, the central agency responsible for counter-espionage, to determine that Mariam was more than just a pretty face.
The Kerala Police now say that when they informed bureau officers about Sasikumaran's link with Mariam, they had dismissed it as "a sex scandal of no consequence".
It was only after intelligence agencies arrested her accomplice Fauzia Hassan and interrogated both of them that they realised that the two may be involved in a major spy network operating in the ISRO.
Fauzia was in fact with Mariam when the police first raided the Trivandrum hotel where she was staying. The police had found that Mariam had overstayed the period of three months that Maldivians are allowed to stay in India without a visa.
A week later, they arrested Mariam. But by then Fauzia had fled to Bangalore and reportedly informed all their accomplices that the police were on to them.
Police now fear that most of the evidence was destroyed by the time Sasikumaran and Chandrasekharan were arrested two weeks later. Says a senior investigating officer: "We now have no documentary evidence of the kind of secrets that were being traded."
Much of the evidence available hinges around conversations and observations about the people involved in the spy network that Fauzia and Mariam recalled while being interrogated.
When questioned, both Nambinarayanan and Sasikumaran denied that they had traded in secret space documents. It was only Chandrasekharan, the Indian representative of Glavkosmos, the Russian space agency, who reportedly admitted that he acted as a middleman for information being sold by the two scientists.
The police had believed that Chandrasekharan was a big-time agent for Glavkosmos and that he had brokered the deal to sell cryogenic engines to the ISRO.
Professor U.R. Rao, former ISRO Chairman, who signed the contract with Glavkosmos, clarifies, however, that Chandrasekharan was never the middleman and did not take part in the negotiations. It is now believed that he may have provided logistic support to the Russian scientists who were visiting India as part of the contract.
What is still not established is which country or countries were behind the spy network. With India's space programme coming of age, there are several reasons why the ISRO could be a target for spying.
By imposing embargoes and getting Russia to renege on the cryogenic contract, the US has successfully delayed India's space programme for several years. The US would, thus, be on top of the list of suspects who would want to know what exactly is happening inside the ISRO and whether the Russians are secretly passing on technology to India.
Other space powers such as France and China, whom India is likely to compete with for launching satellites in the next decade, would be just as keen to know about the country's capability.
Investigative agencies are also looking at the possibility of Chandrasekharan being the conduit for Russian and Indian space secrets to both Europe and the US. With Russian scientists reportedly turning mercenary, they may be looking for agents in India to hawk secrets to the West. Chandrasekharan has admitted that he did sell such information to many western nations.
When the CBI took charge of the investigation, the prime suspects were also countries wanting to acquire space and missile capability, such as Pakistan and Iran. But so far, evidence of the ISI's involvement remains tenuous. It is based more on Fauzia's statements and her family's links.
Her son, Ahmed Nassif, 28, studied in Delhi, IB officials suspect he had some connections with the ISI. Her eldest daughter, in her 30s, is supposed to have a boyfriend working in Habib Bank in Male which is run by Pakistanis. Fauzia admitted that someone in the bank had given her dollars to pay for the information being traded.
Fauzia, who is about 50 years old, appeared to know a lot more than Mariam and didn't break down easily. But intelligence agencies learnt from her that when the Indian scientists and Chandrasekharan met in Bangalore to broker deals, there was someone highly knowledgeable in space technology present, possibly a scientist, who vetted all the information being supplied. Only after the person, whom she calls "master" or "Pasha", verified its importance were payments made in dollars.
Fears that information about the country's missile projects had been passed on appear to be unfounded.
Also when Indian intelligence agencies checked out Mariam's background in Maldives, they found out that she was not just an ordinary call girl.
She had been a private in the National Security Service (NSS), an organisation which is an amalgamation of the armed and police forces in Maldives.
But more importantly, she was reportedly the mistress of a high ranking member of the NSS and was also in touch with several ministers. She had resigned in April 1994 and had come to India in July, ostensibly to seek admission for her daughter in a Bangalore school.
India is well aware that Maldives, whose 2.3-lakh population is largely Muslim, sends its officers regularly for training in Pakistan. But using the Maldivian route to support spying and terrorist activities is said to be a relatively new development.
After the scandal broke out, Har Swarup Singh, India's high commissioner in Male, informally expressed his concern to the Maldivian Foreign Ministry, saying: "India would like nothing to happen that would affect our close friendship."
What is still not clear is the nature of the information passed to Pakistan. Intelligence agencies believe that some of it pertains to India's Vikas, the liquid fuel rocket engine built under a technology transfer agreement with France.
Nambinarayanan had, in fact, headed a 35-member Indian team of space scientists for training to France in the mid-70s as part of an exchange programme. Vikas, a powerful 60-tonne thrust engine, is now used as the second stage of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and its production has been indigenised.
Despite launching it around the time India did in the '60s, Pakistan's space programme is still nascent. It has been largely used as a front for its missile programme and its space scientists haven't progressed beyond elementary sounding rockets.
If Pakistan or a consortium of Muslim countries, including Iran - as is being suspected - want to build an intermediate range ballistic missile of the Agni class which can hit targets up to 2,500 km away, then a liquid engine of the Vikas class may be suitable.
Senior defence scientists, however, say it will involve major modifications before it can be used to power missiles. Vikas has been designed to operate in the more benign space environment. To be used in a missile, it will have to be "ruggedised" to handle the pressures and temperature of re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.
Also, as Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, chief of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), points out: "While I wouldn't like to comment on the specific instance because it is still being investigated, in general, if people think that by stealing drawings they can build rockets, then they are only cheating themselves. Apart from designs, one needs the sweat of thousands of scientists and tremendous infrastructure facilities to achieve such excellence."
Even if Nambinarayanan and his team have not passed on Vikas' drawings, did they have access to sensitive missile technology information which they may have passed on? Unlikely, say defence research scientists.
While there is informal interaction between space and defence research scientists, there is also an element of competition between the two. Also, unlike in space, which has always maintained a culture of openness, DRDO's drawings are well-coded and difficult to spirit away. Even details about a missile's accuracy are kept a closely guarded secret.
The exact extent of the two scientists' involvement and their motives for the crime have still not been established.
Both Fauzia and Mariam had reportedly mentioned the presence of Sasikumaran and a "fair-skinned" scientist - Nambinarayanan suffers from a skin discolouration. They had had several meetings in Bangalore with Chandrasekharan and his friend, Sharma, where secrets were supposedly traded.
Chandrasekharan revealed that the operation had been going on for the past two to three years. He claimed that Nambinarayanan already had dealings with Fauzia before he came on the scene.
"If people steal designs hoping to build rockets they are only cheating themselves."
Abdul Kalam
DRDO chief
Intelligence agencies know that Sasikumaran took Mariam out several times in Trivandrum. During interrogation, Mariam revealed that on one such occasion she had handed him a package sent by Fauzia.
The package accidently opened and dollar bills dropped out. Sasikumaran is also said to have once brought along Nambinarayanan to meet Mariam.
When intelligence agencies raided Sasikumaran's house, they found, as one officer puts it, "a suitcase full of title deeds and blue-chip share certificates".
They also recovered several documents pertaining to the cryogenic project which he was not supposed to have had access to. Apart from having a couple of houses in Trivandrum, Sasikumaran is said to have 1.5 acres of land in an industrial estate in Tamil Nadu.
The CBI estimates his assets to be worth over Rs 55 lakh and has detained him under the Prevention, of Corruption Act. Nambinarayanan, on the other hand, lives in a two-storey house in Trivandrum which he built after selling his ancestral house and taking an ISRO loan. He does not own a car or other luxury goods. However, intelligence agencies do believe that he has a stake in several businesses.
Lack of concrete evidence is another reason why the CBI has so far resisted pressure from the intelligence agencies to arrest Raman Srivastava, the IGP. The local press has been full of reports alleging that the IGP was a key figure in the spy ring and was being shielded because he was close to Kerala Chief Minister K. Karunakaran.
But Srivastava's role in the affair still remains nebulous. Fauzia and Mariam constantly talk of a Brigadier Srivastava who was used to acquire defence secrets. When they were shown pictures of the IGP, they reportedly identified him once as the brigadier. But on another occasion, they pointed at someone else.
The scandal has also exposed a major lacuna in ISRO's surveillance system of its scientists and engineers. Only when they are recruited is their background investigated. After that, the organisation rarely carries out checks to weed out errant scientists from sensitive posts.
Both Sasikumaran and Nambinarayanan were involved in a case described as "a violation of the code of conduct" in 1981. Both were transferred to insignificant posts. In 1984, a fresh inquiry was held and the two were exonerated.
While the IB seems to have known about Sasikumaran's philanderings before the scandal broke out, Nambinarayanan had shown signs of frustration in the past two years and had reportedly wanted to quit his job at the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC). On November 1, 10 days after Mariam's arrest, he sent in his resignation.
In it, he asked to be relieved in 11 days and then scribbled a PS: "Incidentally, you may kindly recall my discussion with you in August '94 about my intention to seek voluntary retirement after the PSLV launch and you had agreed to my request." ISRO officials admit there is a need to review its surveillance systems.
Meanwhile, what has raised doubts about the importance of the spy network is the amateurish way in which it was run: Sasikumaran getting involved so openly with Mariam, even ringing up friends in the police to do her a favour: Mariam overstaying her visit; both Fauzia's and Mariam's inability to speak English or the local language fluently; and Chandrasekharan exhibiting a lack of technical knowledge about rocketry while being questioned.
All these hardly point to a major spy ring with the capability of extensively penetrating India's sensitive defence and space establishments. Investigating agencies will have to come up with more definitive proof and arrests if they want to get to the bottom of the whole mystery.
- with Jacob George
