Nanda Devi

Leading an Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF) trekking team to the Nanda Devi Sanctuary in 2001, mountaineer and author Harish Kapadia thought it fit to build a small stone temple at the base camp, a place christened Chaubata.

The temple at Chaubata

The temple was “in the memory” of his son, Lt Nawang Kapadia of 4/3 Gorkha Rifles, killed in a terrorist attack in Kashmir the previous year, but was dedicated to the supreme goddess of the region, Nanda Devi, “to give her rest from excesses”, says Kapadia. The “excesses” in question relate to a story that is now 50 years old.
In October 1965, the US’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) joined hands in a clandestine mission to install a nuclear-powered sensing device on the summit of India’s second highest peak, also one of its most revered: the 25,643ft (around 7815m) Nanda Devi in Uttarakhand’s Garhwal Himalayas.

Installing the device, however, meant carrying up equipment weighing around 56kg, including an 8-10ft-high antenna, two transceiver sets and the most vital component, a system for nuclear auxiliary power (SNAP) generator. The generator’s nuclear fuel, consisting of seven plutonium capsules, came in a special container.
On 18 October, when the team reached Camp IV, at over 24,000ft, a terrible blizzard and severe cold conditions forced a rethink. Team leader Manmohan Singh Kohli, now 83, had to choose between men and machine: He chose to save the lives of his men; “many would have been killed,” he says today.

Local villager Diwansingh Butolia (left) worked as a ration porter during the 1965 mission, though he wasn’t aware of the dangers

The nuclear-fuelled generator, nicknamed Guru Rinpoche by the climbing sherpas, after the Buddhist god, was already emitting heat, he says, and those who knew about its radioactive dangers were apprehensive. Unable to take the generator with them, the team secured it near Camp IV and returned to safety. When they returned in May 1966, all the equipment—including the deadly stock of plutonium, which was “about half the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima”, says Kohli—was missing. It has never been found. Theories and fears abound, but nobody seems to know what happened.
The plutonium capsules, which according to Kohli’s and other estimates have a longevity of over a hundred years, could still be buried somewhere in the snow. One suggestion is that they were lost in an avalanche. The area has been virtually closed for decades. Barring a few exceptions, such as army or IMF sponsored expeditions, nobody is allowed to climb or explore Nanda Devi, purportedly for environmental reasons.
Kohli says a Hollywood film pivoted on the 1965 incident is being planned. The script is ready, he says, but refuses to give any details. Certainly, it can tap into the veil of intrigue and mystery that shrouds the beautiful mountain 50 years on.
“Considering that over 200 people were involved and it went on for three years, this was the 20th century’s greatest mountaineering-cum-espionage operation. It stretched the limits of human endurance,” Kohli says. In the effort to install the surveillance device, and then retrieve it, nearly a dozen ascents were made from 1965-68 on Nanda Devi, described by climber Tenzing Norgay as among the most difficult Himalayan climbs.

Installation in progress during the first visit to Nanda Kot in 1967, with Nanda Devi in the background

The fear was of large-scale plutonium contamination of the Rishi Ganga, the river that drains the Nanda Devi glaciers into the Ganga. For, as Kohli says, the “lives of millions of Indians would be affected”, especially those living along the Ganga, right up to Kolkata. Water sources and rocks were tested for hints of radiation, and two HH-43B Huskies—ultra-modern, high-altitude helicopters used by the American air force—were pressed into service, writes Himalayan historian and author Prabhat Kumar Ganguli in Nanda Abhiyatra, a book in Bengali published this year. Kohli’s 8th Indo-Tibetan Border Police Battalion was moved to Tapovan, near the Rishi Ganga banks, to continuously monitor the waters for radioactivity. It virtually became the Nanda Devi Battalion, says Kohli. The mountain and the surrounding Nanda Devi Sanctuary were closed to expeditions.
In 1967, the Americans, with the help of Kohli and other Indian climbers such as Sonam Wangyal, H.C.S. Rawat and G.S. Bhangu, successfully installed a second nuclear-powered listening device on the neighbouring peak, the 22,510ft Nanda Kot. it worked for the greater part of a year before developing a snag.
In his 2005 book, One More Step, Kohli details the scare when a team led by Rawat went to retrieve it from Nanda Kot in the summer of 1968.
“When the team reached the Dome (the Nanda Kot Dome where the device was installed), they were shocked to see no sign of the entire equipment. They dug a couple of feet and saw an amazing sight. There was a perfectly sound cave formed with the hot generator at the centre. With the continuous heat emitted from the generator, the snow had melted up to 8ft in all directions, creating the spherical cave!” He titled this chapter in the book “Cathedral In Ice”.

A russian MI4 helicopter landing at the Nada Kot Base camp

Yet 1965 was memorable in happier ways too for Kohli, who would spend 42 years in all with the navy, ITBP and Air India. Just a few months before the Nanda Devi assignment, Kohli led an Indian team to the summit of Everest, making India the fourth country to climb the mountain.

The Nanda Devi call-up came soon after. At the time, though, says Kohli, he “didn’t know” about the wider ramifications of the nuclear-powered generator’s loss. “Only after it was lost and we heard that millions of Indians could die did the gravity of the situation dawn on us,” he says on phone from New Delhi.

Spies In The Himalayas, a book on the Nanda Devi episode that he co-authored with Kenneth Conboy, has an anecdote that sums up the tense mood among intelligence circles after the disappearance. Following India’s Everest glory, 8 July 1966 was chosen as the day when the Everest team led by Kohli would be honoured with the Arjuna awards. But B.N. Mullik (along with R.N. Kao, the key intelligence man behind the Nanda Devi mission) wanted Kohli to leave immediately for Nanda Devi to assist in “Operation Recovery”. “India faces an unparalleled national calamity. Forget the Arjuna!” declared Mullik.

Berry Corber and M.S. Kohli busy with the installation

Five decades later, Kohli thinks there is now “very little chance” of radioactivity from the missing plutonium. He bases his belief on the assessment of “the country’s top scientists”, the reports of various expert committees, and his own understanding of the Nanda Kot episode, when they found the plutonium-filled device had melted 8ft of snow and was “lying like an idol” in a cavity. “According to me, the plutonium capsules will remain hot and melt the snow. It is a mystery whether it formed a cavity or travelled to the bottom of the glacier or got stuck somewhere in between. I see very little chance of radioactivity. No chance,” says the mountaineer..

Manmohan Singh Kohli. Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint

Like everything else, there is no unanimity about the effects on the health of sherpas and jawans. Kohli rejects Alter’s claim on the sherpa deaths as “conjecturing”. Kapadia, also a former vice-president of the state-run IMF, recounts a tale common in mountaineering circles. “During an expedition to the Milam glacier (in the vicinity of Nanda Devi) in the 1970s, we heard from ITBP jawans who had participated in the 1965 expedition that a few of them fell sick from exposure to radiation. The sherpas who carried the gadget had a lot of exposure,” says Kapadia, who believes the “threat of radioactivity is certainly there”—still.