The Nuclear Secret of The Great Himalayas
by The Prudent
I guess 15 years since independence was sufficient for Jawaharlal and his counterpart, Vengalil Krishna Menon, to express their collective irrational exuberance in showcasing India’s military strength. Yeah! You guessed right: I am talking about the 1962 Sino-Indian War, which came with perks like 1383 deaths, 1047 deep wounds, and of course, how can we forget a diplomatic table to discuss the release of 4000 captures? These figures denote the number of times a thread ripped apart from the integrity of India. Altogether, it was a serious mess that India couldn’t undo.
The Cabinet Committee on National Security was in motion to find the problem, which ultimately came to light as an Intelligence failure of IB. At that time, IB’s responsibilities narrowed to gathering domestic intelligence and dealing with internal security, so we needed to rely on Western nations for external intelligence in wars. India’s crushing defeat in the war prompted the bureau to create a specialized wing to gather external intelligence and perform covert operations on neighboring countries.
Under this, in 1963, three organizations were born: Aviation Research Center, whose role was to gather technical intelligence for special operations; Special Frontier Force, a stay-behind organization for Indo-Tibetan-Border-Police and last was Sashastra Seema Bal, whose role was to give ammunition support in espionage.
Rameshwar Nath Kao was named the director of ARC. Just months after its genesis, ARC suffered its first significant setback when China successfully conducted two nuclear tests in Xinjiang Province. To provide a context about the level of shock India was into, Xinjiang shared its borders with POK, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, the Russian Federation, and India. There was a reason China chose Xinjiang: Negligible human population, surrounded by the Tian Shen Mountains in the north and Kunlun Mountains in the south with a 3,37,600 sq. Km of Taklamakan Desert, making it the optimal position to go nuclear. After putting the entire world in chaos, now was the time to plot the right course of countermeasures.
The United States was concerned as it posed a direct threat to the power dynamics of the existing world order. They approached Kao, preparing to install a Nuclear Sensing Seismic Monitor at India’s second-highest peak, Nanda Devi in Uttarakhand. A team of 8 climbers, of which 4 were US civilians, and the rest were Indians from the 1962 Everest summit cadre, were given this task, named OPERATION HAT. The expedition started on 10 October 1965, under the leadership of Captain Manmohan Singh Kohli, carrying a 56 Kg device with an 8–10 ft antenna along with two transceivers and a SNAP (System for Nuclear Auxillary Power) generator. The generator, named “Guru Rinpoche”, was to get its power from seven Plutonium capsules.
On 18 October 1965, they reached camp IV at 24000 ft, following which the weather turned into a terrible blizzard, leaving Kohli to choose between his men and device. Kohli returned to base with his men, leaving behind a nuclear device at 24000 ft in the arms of nature. In May 1966, when Kohli reached Camp IV, there was no sign of the device, knowing which CIA became restless. The search operation continued for two years; hence no sign of the device. Those capsules have half-lives of a hundred years and are still under the snow, which may contaminate the Ganges with radioactive elements.
Again, in 1967, Americans with Kohli installed a second nuclear device at Nanda Kot. It worked for a better part before developing a problem. It seemed coincidental that when a team of climbers went to retrieve this device, it again went missing, but this time only for a while, as the generator produced enough heat that it melted 10 ft of ice from all sides.
Ten years after this incident, an American magazine named OUTPOST published an article regarding the CIA-IB joint secret operation. This news in the mainstream media led to International pressure on India to stop its nuclear tests, which first occurred on 18 May 1974 in the Pokhran ranges. Finally, this media outburst had its sand on after Morarji Desai officially accepted it.
After more than five decades, that radioactive element is still buried somewhere in the Himalayan snow, waiting to meet the northern perennial rivers and gifting more than 400 million people and their loved ones with acute radiation syndrome and cancer risks.
