S. Nambi Narayanan, an Indian aerospace employee who worked for the Indian Space Research Organization, was born on December 12, 1941. (ISRO). In 2019, the Indian government awarded him with Padma Bhushan, their third-highest civilian honour. He oversaw the group that obtained French technology for the Vikas engine, which was used in India’s first PSLV launch. He directed the cryogenics division as a senior government official at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
He was accused of spying in 1994. The Central Bureau of Probe (CBI) dropped the accusations against him in April 1996, and the Supreme Court of India halted the Kerala government’s investigation for procedural reasons. During the 2014 elections, the Bjp made the matter public. The Supreme Court granted Narayanan a settlement of 50,00,000 (approximately $70,000) in 2018 and through the bench of Dipak Misra. Nevertheless, the Keralan government chose to award him 1.3 crores (1,300,000; around US$183,000). His story is the subject of the movie Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, starring R. Madhavan.
Is Nambi Narayanan Alive?
Mr Nambi Narayanan is still alive and well, and the Supreme Court has acquitted him of all charges. He received roughly 50 lakh rupees in compensation for the persecution he endured. Now that he and his family had been harassed, the court had ordered an investigation to determine who was to blame.
The two scientists, Sasikumar & Narayanan, were relocated out of Thiruvananthapuram & assigned desk positions following the rejection of the allegations brought against them. The Keralan government was required to pay him compensation of Rs. 1 crore by the NHRC in 2001. He left his job in 2001.
Nambi Narayanan’s Career
Narayanan began working with ISRO in 1966 as a research associate at the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station after completing his engineering studies in Madurai. In 1969, he was granted a NASA grant and admitted to Princeton University. Professor Luigi Crocco oversaw his master’s degree program there in chemically rocket propulsion. He had said that he had to teach Sarabhai about liquid propulsion technology when he returned to India with knowledge of liquid propulsion at a period when Indian rocket propulsion was still entirely reliant on solid fuels (additional source needed).
In exchange for a hundred person-years of engineering work from ISRO, Societe Europeenne de Propulsion offered to sell the Viking engine technology in 1974. Three teams worked together to achieve this transfer, and Narayanan oversaw the group of forty engineers who were responsible for acquiring French technology. Two other teams worked on creating the take the actions in Mahendragiri and indigenizing the hardware in India. In 1985, the initial engine, known as Vikas, underwent a successful test. Internal ISRO assessments praised Narayanan’s excellent organizational and management abilities but also mentioned his propensity to claim the glory for his team’s accomplishments alone and examples of “his having a small business.”
The Surveillance Cell’s 1982 investigation was later abandoned. As the captain of the Central Industrial Security Army unit stationed at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, R. B. Sreekumar looked into a claim that Narayanan had manipulated a tender. He made a plea for a voluntary resignation in 1994, one month when Kerala police detained him.
He received the Padma Bhushan award from the Indian government on January 26, 2019, for creating Vikas (Rocket Engineer).
READ MORE: Who Is Ennis In 1883? Click To Know!
False Cases Against Nambi Narayanan
Nambi Narayanan, an Isro scientist, was detained by Kerala police in 1994 on suspicion of espionage when it was claimed that he had given secret information about India’s spacecraft to other nations.
A Maldivian woman named Rasheeda was detained in Thiruvananthapuram in Oct 1994 for being accused of stealing classified designs of Isro rocket engines to sell them to Pakistan. This led to public awareness of the issue.
Narayanan was detained along with Fousiya Hasan, a Maldivian acquaintance of Rasheeda, and the then-Isro deputy director D Sasikumaran.
Despite a conclusion report in 1996 and a two-year inquiry, Narayanan received a clean bill of health from the CBI. The investigating organization accused state police officers and the then-deputy head of the intelligence bureau, RB Shreekumar, of incriminating the scientist.
In 2018, the top court mandated the Kerala state to pay Narayanan 50 lakh in reparations for illegal incarceration and instructed a high-level commission to investigate the actions of police officials. The court described the police operation against the erstwhile Isro scientists as a “psycho-pathological therapy.” According to the top court’s order, the scientist’s “liberty and dignity,” which are essential to his human rights, were compromised as he was brought into jail and ultimately forced to deal with “cynical abhorrence,” despite all the glories of the past.
The federal government petitioned the SC on April 5 of this year to ask for an assessment of a report submitted by a committee reviewing the participation of police personnel in the 1994 case.