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Whack and Epified have come together to throw some light on the mysterious deaths of India's
nuclear scientists starting with Homi Jehangir Bhabha.
In 2009, 48-year-old Lokanathan Mahalingam, a nuclear scientist working at the Kaiga Atomic
Power Station died mysteriously. His body was found in the Kali River 5 days
after his time of death. Two young researchers, Umang Singh and Partha Pratim Bag,
were burnt to death in a mysterious fire in the modular lab of the Bhabha Atomic Research
Centre'. Mahadevan Padmanabhan Iyer, a mechanical engineer
at Bhabba Atomic Research Centre, was found dead in his house in south Mumbai in February
2010. Reports say that except for some blood stains
on the walls and floors, his house was undisturbed. A few weeks before this, Ravi Mule, who worked
at the Nuclear Power Corporation, was also found dead.
In 2011, BARC scientist Uma Rao was also found dead. She apparently overdosed on sleeping
pills.
More recently, KK Josh and Abhish Shivam, both of whom were working on India's first
indigenous nuclear ballistic submarine, INS Arihant, were found dead on railway tracks.
They had apparently been poisoned.
Chetan Kothari, an RTI activist, says that between 2010 and 2014, ''a number of Indian
nuclear scientists have been dying under mysterious circumstances all that's happening is that the police
are classifying them either as 'unexplained' or suicides.''
Mystery still surrounds the death of nuclear scientists from India, and it all started
49 years ago with the death of Homi Jehangir Bhabha - the father
of India's Nuclear Programme.
Fifteen days after the mysterious death of the Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri
in Tashkent on January 11, 1966. The Air India flight 101 - on its way to Vienna
- crashed in the mountains of Mont Blanc killing 111 Indian nationals including Homi Bhabha.
Shastri was a firm believer in using Nuclear Power for peaceful purposes but due to the
Indo-Pak war and trouble on the eastern borders with China,
Shastri backed Homi Bhabha in his aggressive approach to make Nuclear Weapons to defend
us in the times of war.
Homi Jehangir Bhabha was a scientist, a visionary, an institution builder and the father of the
Indian Nuclear Programme. Before him there was no institute in India
which had the necessary facilities for his work in nuclear physics, cosmic rays,
high energy physics, and other such frontiers of knowledge.
He was the founding director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Trombay Atomic
energy Establishment which is now named after him.
In 1948, Nehru appointed Bhabha as the director of the nuclear programme and tasked him with
developing nuclear weapons. In the 1950s, Bhabha represented India and
served as President of the United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic
Energy in Geneva, Switzerland in 1955.
But something happened in the 1960's that changed him.
In the early 1960's there was trouble at our borders in the east. In 1962, the Indo-China
war broke out. Chinese forces captured Rezang la in Chushul
near Kashmir, as well as Tawang in the east.
After the end of the war Homi Bhabha aggressively started lobbying for the development of Nuclear
Weapons. Bhabha gained international prominence after
deriving the expression known as Bhabha scattering, which enhanced the precision of measuring
the amount of energy in a nuclear reaction. This made the world take notice of India as
a rising super power with its strength in nuclear technology.
On 25th January 1966, Homi Bhabha boarded the Air India flight number 101 to Vienna.
He was on his way to attend the International Atomic Energy Agency conference.
The Pilot of the plane indicated no trouble or malfunctions during the flight and while
approaching Mont Blanc, he even checked in to report that everything
was going as per scheduled. Five minutes later, the plane crashed,
Homi Bhabha and 110 other Indian Nationals were on board.
Surprisingly, India did not order or ask for any kind investigations into this mysterious
plane crash.
Daniel Roche, an aviation enthusiast, decided to take it upon himself to investigate the
crash as no further investigation was being pursued.
After five years of research, he concluded that the airplane had exploded
in mid-air before hitting the glacier.
If the plane had crashed in the mountain, there should have been a huge fire and an
explosion as there was 41,000 tonnes of fuel in the aircraft,
but that was not the case. There was little debri and no indicator of a head-on collision
with the glacier.
There were reports which were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the CIA
which gave evidence of the American government spying on India's Nuclear
activity both civilian and military ever since Homi Bhabha started the nuclear programme.
There have also been unverified reports which claim that the CIA was targeting Homi Bhabha
specifically and wanted to prevent his advancements in the nuclear field.
So Why was no investigation called for when more than 100 Indian nationals died in a plane
crash -- that too with high-level Indian diplomats on board?
The Government of India continues to turn a blind eye to the deaths of the Indian scientists,
classifying them as unexplained deaths.
While India today continues to boasts of being a very responsible nuclear power in the words
of Manmohan Singh
Isn't it also time that we as a nation got up and took another look at what has been
happening to our Indian scientists?