Strangely, Bhabha died just 13 days after Lal Bahadur Shastri died; why? Was it an unfortunate death or a conspiracy? Were they both killed because they wanted to make India a Nuclear Power Nation?
Was the CIA involved in the Unfortunate Accident of Air India’s Boeing 707, which was carrying the head of India’s nuclear establishment, to paralyze India’s nuclear program? Was it an unfortunate accident or the Hands of the Crow?
In this article, we have explained all the aspects of Homi Bhabha’s death mystery.
Contents
Revolutionary Nuclear Scientist Homi Bhabha’s Death
Who was Homi Bhabha?
Born on October 30, 1909, Homi Jehangir Bhabha was an Indian Nuclear Physicist and founding director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). Bhabha was also the founding director of the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET), now known as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, in his honor. He is regarded as the “Father of the Indian Nuclear Program.” TIFR and AEET were the cornerstones of India’s nuclear weapons development, which Bhabha oversaw as director.
Bhabha effectively convinced top leaders of the Congress Party, including Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, to begin the ambitious nuclear program. As part of this goal, Bhabha created the Institute’s Cosmic Ray Research Unit and began working on the idea of the Point Particle Movement in 1944 while also undertaking separate nuclear weapons research.
Bhabha received the Adams Prize in 1942 and the Padma Bhushan in 1954. In 1951 and between 1953 and 1956, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The Plane Crash
An Air India flight 101, a Boeing 707 airliner named Kanchenjunga, carrying Homi Bhabha, the head of India’s nuclear establishment, crashed at Mont Blanc’s peak in the Swiss Alps in January 1966, killing all 117 persons on board. Homi Bhabha was traveling to Vienna for a meeting. The official cause of the disaster was a miscommunication between the pilot and the Geneva airport concerning the plane’s location. However, theories abound, including a Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) assassination plan, which proves that other nuclear powers wanted to prevent India from becoming a nuclear-powered Nation.
How did Homi Bhabha Die?
The second PM of India, Lal Bahadur Shastri, was worried about China’s nuclear testing in 1964. Thus he asked Bhabha if Indian scientists could conduct an underground test. Bhabha has said that India could develop a nuclear weapon quickly. Bhabha had declared on All India Radio in October 1965 that if he were given the go-ahead, India would be able to build a nuclear weapon in 18 months.
India’s second Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, died under strange and ill-investigated circumstances on January 11, 1966. Nuclear Scientist Homi Bhabha was killed on January 24, 1966, in a mysterious and unexplained Plane Crash. Strangely, Bhabha died just 13 days after Lal Bahadur Shastri died; why? Was it death or a conspiracy? Were they both killed because they wanted to make India a Nuclear Power Nation?
According to specialists who asked to remain anonymous, Bhabha was persuaded that if India became a big superpower, it needed to start a nuclear program centered on its benign function in the power, agriculture, and medical sectors. However, they said he had a secret objective, which included creating an Atomic Weapon to safeguard the country. This is why other nuclear powers did not want India to be capable of making atomic weapons. However, they knew that if Bhabha remained, India would be able to do so, so they had to remove Bhabha from the path.
Unfortunate Accident or the Hands of the Crow
Everything was going well, then suddenly, what happened, was the CIA involved in the Unfortunate Accident of Air India’s Boeing 707, which was carrying the head of India’s nuclear establishment, to paralyze India’s nuclear program or someone else?
According to a book titled Conversations with the Crow, which comprises the transcripts of journalist Gregory Douglas’ conversation with former CIA officer Robert Crowley. In telephone discussions with journalist Gregory Douglas, former CIA officer Robert Crowley alleged that the US Central U.S. Intelligence Agency was involved in eliminating both Bhabha and Shastri. Crowley claimed the plane was brought down in the Alps by a bomb planted in the cargo hold. Furthermore, Crowley argues that the CIA got rid of Bhabha to paralyze India’s nuclear program.
The CIA officer was quoted as saying: “We had trouble, you know, with India back in the ’60s when they got uppity and started work on an atomic bomb…the thing is, they were getting into bed with the Russians.” Referring to Homi Bhabha, he said, “That one was dangerous. He had an unfortunate accident. He was flying to Vienna to stir up more trouble when his Boeing 707 had a bomb go off in the cargo hold, And they all fell on a high mountain in the Alps. After that, no real evidence left, and the world became much safer ….”.
Referring to Shastri, he said: “Well, I call it as I see it. At the time, it was our best shot. And we nailed Shastri as well. Another cow-loving raghead. Gregory, you say you don’t know about these people. They were close to getting a bomb, so what if they nuked their deadly Paki enemies? So what? Too many people in both countries. Breed like rabbits and full of snake-worshipping twits. I don’t see what the Brits wanted in India for the life of me. And then threaten us? They were in the sack with the Russians, I told you. Maybe they could nuke the Panama Canal or Los Angeles. We don’t know that, but it is not impossible.”
Shastri: “A political type who started the program in the first place. Babha was a genius, and he could get things done, so we aced both of them. And we let certain people know there was more where that came from. We should have hit the chinks, too,
while we were at it, but they were a tougher target. Did I tell you about the idea of wiping out Asia’s rice crops? We developed a disease that would have wiped rice off the map, and it’s their staple diet. The rice growers here got wind of it and raised such a stink that we canned the whole thing. The theory was that the disease could spread around and hurt their pocketbooks. If the Mao people invade Alaska, we can tell the rice people it’s all their fault.”
As for Gregory Douglas’s claim that the CIA’s plan to kill Bhabha appears to be a CIA conspiracy, based on conversations with former CIA officer Robert Crowley, however, it is worth noting that Gregory Douglas was a well-known conspiracy theorist, forger, and Holocaust denier. He also wrote many conspiracy books. Therefore, it would not be wrong to say that Crowley’s conversation narrated by Douglas in his book is not enough proof of the CIA’s hand behind Bhabha’s death. Read the full book here: https://ia601409.us.archive.org/12/items/conversations-with-the-crow-pdf/conversations-with-the-crow-pdf.pdf
The Journal of Historical Review reviews one of Douglas’s books that discusses the conspiracies and also discusses how he has forged documents in the past. Read it here: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v20/v20n2p40_Douglas.html
Swiss Climber and Aviation enthusiast, Daniel Roche
According to sources, Daniel Roche, a Swiss Climber, and Aviation enthusiast has spent five years researching and collecting the remnants of the plane from the Mont Blanc area. He discovered the remnants of an Air India accident on Mont Blanc, perhaps from 1966 or 1950, as part of his hobby of searching the Alps for traces of old plane crashes. He had found a hand and the upper part of a leg.
Roche said, “I had never found any significant human remains before.” However, Roche believes the bones he uncovered might be those of a female passenger from the 1966 Boeing 707 trip, as one of the plane’s four jet engines was also located.
According to some reports from 2009, Daniel Roche stated that he felt the Air India 101 was intercepted by either a military plane or a missile.
Experts still do not verify Roche’s discoveries to see if they were from the 1966 disaster. Roche’s findings have still not been verified by experts, whether they were from the accident of 1966 or not.
Arnaud Christmann and Jules Berger
On August 21, an Indian diplomatic bag was found by the mountain rescue worker Arnaud Christmann and his neighbor Jules Berger from Mont Blanc close to where an Air India plane crashed. The bag has copies of the Hindustan Times, The Statesman, and The Hindu newspapers, 1966 calendars, and a letter addressed to the then-Indian consul general in New York, CJK Menon. The bag has markings saying “Diplomatic mail” and “Ministry of External Affairs.” The Chamonix town Police, at the base of the Mont Blanc, claimed that they did not find any classified material in it.
Other Reports
Another plane that went down was Air India flight 245 called Malabar Princess, a Lockheed four-motor propeller plane that went down in 1950. While the fragments of the Malabar Princess were discovered in one location, and pieces of the Kanchenjunga were found over a 25-kilometer distance, according to Roche. According to Roche, the Malabar Princess was a concrete example of a crash. Still, the Kanchenjunga was attacked by an Italian military aircraft or a missile because its fragments scattered around the 25-kilometer area. If the Kanchenjunga had crashed into the mountain, there should have been a massive fire because the plane was carrying 41,000 tonnes of fuel, but this did not happen. The plane was 6,000 feet above the ground just two minutes before it crashed.
According to him, it may have crashed with an Italian plane, and because there is very little oxygen at that altitude, no combustion could result in an explosion. However, during his investigations in the Mont Blanc glacier, he discovered the plane’s black box, the pilot’s handbook, a camera, jewelry, and other items of the passengers who had sunk 8 kilometers into the glacier and descended the hillside during the previous 40 years. He responds, “There were news stories at the time about an Italian aircraft that had gone missing the same day,” when asked about his suspicions regarding the Italian plane. He said, “It’s possible that it collided with the Italian aircraft.”
He was able to locate an Italian plane’s fuel tank with writings on it. However, he has no idea if it was a conspiracy because Bhabha was about to deliver India its first nuclear weapon, which the nuclear powers of the moment did not want.
He said, “I feel that I must tell the truth to the world based on the evidence. If the Indian government wants, I am ready to hand over the documents and the passengers’ belongings to them”.
Conclusion
India’s nuclear scientist Homi Bhabha died in a mysterious and unexplained Plane Crash; this incident happened just 13 days after Lal Bahadur Shastri’s death; this raises the question of why both were killed in this way. Is it because they both wanted to make India a nuclear power? Officials said it was because of miscommunication between the pilot and Geneva Airport concerning the plane’s location.
Meanwhile, a former CIA officer Crowley in a conversation with a journalist claimed that the CIA was involved in eliminating both Bhabha and Shastri because they wanted to paralyze India’s nuclear program. Before Crowley died, Joseph Trento, author of light-weight books on the CIA, took over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files with him. After Crowley’s death, some of his close people also died due to various diseases. However, the journalist was a well-known conspiracy theorist who wrote many conspiracy books. Therefore, it would not be wrong to say that Crowley’s conversation narrated by the journalist in his book is not enough proof of the CIA’s hand behind Bhabha’s death.
It is also possible that it was attacked by an Italian military aircraft or a missile because its fragments scattered around the 25-kilometer area, as Daniel Roche claimed. However, Arnaud Christmann and Jules Berger have not found any substantial evidence.
This incident is still on the dark side because there is insufficient official evidence. However, silence from and rushed investigations by the Indian authorities are perceived as evidence of cover-ups.
Homi Bhabha wanted to make India a self-sufficient nuclear power nation, which he could not do. Finally, after eight years, Bhabha’s dream became true when India tested its first atomic bomb, code-named “Smiling Buddha,“ at Pokharan on May 18, 1974.
Also Read: The Strange Disappearance of India’s Nuclear Scientists
Sources
- Homi Bhabha: The physicist with a difference Archived May 13, 2012. News.in.msn.com (June 23, 2015). https://news.in.msn.com/gallery.aspx?cp-documentid=3433120&page=1
- “Homi J. Bhabha: Physics Nobel Prize Nominee and Nominator.” ResearchGate. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB187/index.htm
- Laxman, S. (2017, July 30). CIA Hand In the 1966 Air India Crash That Killed Homi Bhabha, Father Of India’s Nuclear Program. IndiaTimes. https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/cia-hand-in-1966-air-india-crash-that-killed-homi-bhabha-father-of-india-s-nuclear-program-326857.html
- “Homi Jehangir Bhabha”. Physics Today. 19 (3): 108. 1966. doi:10.1063/1.3048089.
- Richelson, Jeffrey Richelson. “U.S. InteU.S.ence and the Indian Bomb”. The National Security Archive, The George Washington University. Published through National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 187.
- Cenciotti, D. (2009, April 21). Air India 101 conspiracy theory. The Aviationist. https://theaviationist.com/2009/04/21/air-india-101-conspiracy-theory/
- The Journal of Historical Review, March/April 2001 (Vol. 20, No. 2), page 40. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v20/v20n2p40_Douglas.html.
- “BBC News – Diplomatic bag contents revealed.” BBC News. Bbc.co.uk. September 19, 2012. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-19645550
- News18. (2017, July 30). Has a Swiss Climber Traced Mystery Crash That Killed Homi Bhabha? https://www.news18.com/news/india/has-a-swiss-climber-traced-mystery-crash-that-killed-homi-bhabha-father-of-indias-atom-bomb-1477249.html
- Fox News. (2017, September 27). Body parts in the Alps may be linked to long-ago Air India crashes. https://www.foxnews.com/world/body-parts-found-in-alps-may-be-linked-to-long-ago-air-india-crashes
- Mishra, A. (2019, August 23). All about the two deadly Air India crashes in France, whose victims Modi will honor today. ThePrint. https://theprint.in/theprint-essential/all-about-the-2-deadly-air-india-crashes-in-france-whose-victims-modi-will-honour-today/280686/
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