Nuclear leakage in Ganga? How a secret CIA mission 60 years ago may haunt the billions in India who depend on the holy river

Time of India

a day ago

In 1965, India's top climbers carried a nuclear spying device up Nanda Devi for the CIA to watch China's atomic tests. Bad weather forced them to abandon it. The device vanished into the glacier, taking five kilograms of plutonium with it. Parliament asked questions, but the device was never found. Today, meltwater feeds the Ganga from the same glacier. Local fears remain while official monitoring is absent. The Cold War's hidden bomb still rests, half-lost, beneath India's sacred peaks.
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Nearly sixty years ago, deep in the Himalayas, India's best climbers carried a nuclear-powered spying device up Nanda Devi , aiming it at China's secret atomic tests. What happened next has left a radioactive question mark buried somewhere under the snow — and perhaps leaking slowly towards the Ganges, lifeline to half a billion people.The device, a Remote Sensing Data Collection Unit powered by a plutonium capsule, vanished during a storm in 1965. Despite risky recoveries and years of quiet searching, it remains lost near the Rishi Ganga glacier. Captain Manmohan Singh Kohli , who led the mission, never called himself a spy. 'Look, we weren't spies, but adventure men. For us, it was a mountaineering expedition with a special purpose,' Kohli told the BBC years later from his home in Nagpur.The Cold War made unlikely partners. The CIA's plan was born when China shocked the world by testing its first nuclear bomb in Xinjiang. The US needed eyes on Chinese missile launches and bomb designs. Satellites were too new and unreliable. High Himalayan peaks offered a view no camera in space could match.Barry Bishop, an American mountaineer, convinced Air Force Chief Curtis LeMay the plan could work. LeMay, known for his aggressive nuclear strategies, signed off. India's leaders, still recovering from the 1962 border war with China, agreed to help. Their best climbing team would haul the American-built sensor as high as possible — in silence.Captain Kohli and his climbers had only just returned from planting India's flag on Everest in 1965. Many porters and Sherpas who trusted him followed him up Nanda Devi too. This time, the cargo was no flag but a 57 kg generator with a plutonium heart.'You should write about the uniqueness of the mission — the Nanda Devi joint operation was the biggest in the world,' Kohli told the BBC. 'Biggest, because of the number of people that took part in it. Besides the military of porters and Sherpas, we also had nuclear experts, intelligence officers, specialised agents like communicators, which is not the case in regular mountaineering expeditions.'The idea first sparked when Barry Bishop, a renowned American climber, spoke with US Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay. Bishop told him the Himalayan peaks offered a clear line into Chinese territory. LeMay, known for his appetite for nuclear brinkmanship, pushed the CIA to act. But they needed India.India, still reeling from its 1962 defeat by China, saw a chance to watch its old foe. Intelligence chiefs Bhola Nath Mullik and Rameshwar Nath Kao agreed. They picked Kohli — the calm Navy officer who'd brought India glory on Everest.Kohli wrote later, 'I was told we had to carry something to the summit of a mountain, alongside the Americans. It was, or the fact that it was composed of 80% of the radioactive material that destroyed Hiroshima, were details we didn't know.'In September 1965, two junior Intelligence Bureau officers reached Lata village below Nanda Devi. They needed porters — tough men of the Jad Bhotia tribe. Karthik Rana, an elder porter, remembered: 'Luckily, in the early summer of 1965, I was hired by Japanese mountaineers to climb another peak, Trisul, so I missed out when Indian saabs came calling.'Thirty-three Bhotia porters signed up. Nine elite Sherpas joined them. The mission's brain trust was formidable: Kohli led, with four IB officers — Harish Rawat, Sonam Wangyal, Gurcharan Singh Bhangu, and Sonam Gyatso. Rameshwar Nath Kao, future father of RAW, kept daily radio contact with Kohli. American climbers and CIA men watched from base camps.The plan was simple but brutal. Drag 57 kg of high-tech sensors and plutonium fuel up the Rishi Ganga gorge. Lash it to the peak. Let it watch.The team set out in late September 1965. IB officers secured dozens of local porters in Lata village, gateway to the peak. As the men climbed, weather turned. Blizzards pinned them near 7,300 metres. The nuclear device was too heavy to carry safely down. The only choice: secure it to a rock outcrop and escape before frostbite claimed lives.When Kohli's team returned in spring, snow slides and shifting ice had wiped the ledge clean. The device was gone, dragged into the glacier's gut by tonnes of moving snow and rock. 'If the capsule ever ruptures, it could contaminate the Rishi Ganga for decades,' Kohli warned.For the next few years, new attempts used dummy units to test safer placements on Nanda Kot, a nearby peak. Some dummy sets also vanished into crevasses. The original unit, with its real plutonium, never reappeared.Captain Manmohan 'Mohan' Singh Kohli, the Navy officer who put India atop Everest and carried a secret nuclear mission into the Himalayas, died on 23 June in New Delhi at 93. The Indian Navy described him as 'a pioneer of adventure training and a national icon who shaped the mountaineering ethos of the armed forces.'Born in 1932 in Haripur, now in Pakistan, Kohli's childhood turned upside down by Partition. At just 15, he fled his burning town on a refugee train to Amritsar. A bullet missed him by inches. He arrived with nothing but fear — and grit.After college in Lahore, Shimla and Allahabad, Kohli joined the Navy in 1954 as an education officer. His life changed when he was posted to the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute . There, he trained under Tenzing Norgay — Everest hero of 1953. The student climbed fast. By 1959, Kohli led the Navy's ascent of Nanda Kot, a tough peak no one had tamed since 1936. Two years later, he summited Annapurna III, braving killer ridges and avalanches. He was now India's top climber.By 1964, India had twice failed to conquer Everest. Lives were lost. Hopes were high. So the nation turned to Kohli. He had six months to lead India's third attempt.His plan was precise. As The Times of India reported, the team of 21 — climbers, Sherpas, doctors, and even a film crew — left by train on 26 February 1965. They trekked into the Solu-Khumbu valley, reached Thyangboche Monastery by 8 March, and built base camp on 22 March. By 27 March, they crossed the deadly Khumbu Icefall — the season's earliest crossing — giving them an edge.Between 20 and 29 May, four summit teams planted nine Indians atop Everest — then a world record. Kohli stayed at South Col, coordinating every step. He did not climb the final ridge. Instead, he ran the radios, rationed supplies, steadied morale.When they returned, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri called it 'a triumph for the whole nation.' Kohli refused to take an Arjuna Award unless every climber and Sherpa got one too. He won that fight. It remains the only time the award has honoured an entire team.Today, the Rishi Ganga tumbles down from the same glacier into the Alaknanda, one of the Ganga's main tributaries. Local communities depend on this meltwater for crops, livestock and daily life. There are no warning signs on the trails. Trekkers pass over the ancient slip point. Few know a Cold War relic lies somewhere below.Glaciologists like Dr Milap Chand Sharma say the Himalayas do not hide things forever. Unlike deserts, glaciers shift and flow downhill. As the ice melts under climate pressure, debris buried for decades can surface. The device's stainless steel casing was designed to resist corrosion — but the mountain's force is patient.MGK Menon, the only surviving scientist from the 1978 inquiry, later urged, 'Someone in the government should look into it.'Some porters who helped carry the generator fell ill later. Some died young. No direct link was ever proven. But the fear lingers in local memory.No monitoring ever began. Villagers living beneath the snowfield drink glacier runoff every day. The mountains remain quiet. But as glaciers shrink and rivers swell, the Cold War's buried spy could still return — carried by the holy river that so many call life itself.Kohli never stopped warning about Everest's commercial circus. He told the BBC, 'Climbing Everest looks like a big joke today. It absolutely does not resemble the old days when there were adventures, challenges and exploration.'After retiring in 1974, he wrote books, mentored young climbers, and pushed mountaineering into schools. He shaped the Indo-Tibetan Border Police into a mountain force.He lived through Partition's pain, Everest's storms and a Cold War secret. Yet he left this simple line behind: 'Leadership is not about standing on top; it is about taking others there.'Captain Kohli's peaks still stand. So does the secret he left behind. Some secrets, though, are buried deeper than any summit.(With inputs from TOI)