Was Homi Bhabha Murdered? The Mystery Behind His Death

60 years ago, on January 24, 1966, Dr Homi J Bhabha, the father of India's nuclear programme, died in an air crash on Mont Blanc.
The official inquiry said the plane went off course in bad weather, but coincidences, missing evidence, and later unproven claims have kept conspiracy theories alive.

A fascinating excerpt from Bakhtiar Dadabhoy's book, Homi J Bhabha: A Life.

Dr Homi Bhabha took Air India flight 101 to Geneva en route to Vienna. He was booked to Geneva on a flight the day before, but for reasons that have never been made clear he took Air India flight 101.

On 24 January, the Boeing 707, Kanchenjunga, crashed into the Glacier des Bossons on the southwest face of Mont Blanc at 4,807 m at around 7.02 am local time.

All 106 passengers, including Bhabha and 11 crew members died in the crash.

The Kanchenjunga crashed in almost exactly the same spot as Air India's Malabar Princess had on 3 November 1950, killing 48 passengers and crew.

Like the wreckage of Kanchenjunga, the bodies of the victims of the Malabar Princess crash were never recovered.

The black box from the 1966 crash was never recovered and rescue operations were halted the day after the crash owing to inclement weather conditions.

The investigation resumed in September 1966, and the French inquiry commission completed its report in March 1967.

It concluded that severe white-out conditions near the summit of the mountain, coupled with miscommunication over phraseology between the air traffic controllers in Geneva and the pilot led to the crash.

The report concluded that the crash was the result of a miscalculation rather than another plane intercepting it.

According to the commission, the most likely hypothesis was that the commander miscalculated his position in relation to Mont Blanc.

He seems to have mistakenly believed that he had passed the ridge leading to the summit, and, thinking that he was still at a level that afforded sufficient safety clearance over the top of Mont Blanc, continued his descent.

One of the receivers on the plane had also not been working, and the pilot misunderstood the verbal data sent to him on the plane's position. The French report was accepted by the Indian government.

Even though the largest parts of the debris were on the Italian Alps near Courmayeur, Italy did not participate in the inquiry commission but eyewitness accounts of Italian individuals were incorporated into the French report.

According to the transcript of communication of the air traffic controller in Geneva included in the French report, flight 6029 was scheduled to fly over Geneva around the same time as Air India 101 was to make its descent into the city.

When the latter suddenly disappeared from the radar, the controller asked flight 6029, around 7.04 am, to report on what it saw around Mont Blanc.

The pilot remarked, in Italian, that he saw a black cloud at around 16,000 ft, which was different from the other clouds, and he thought that the black cloud had possibly been caused by an explosion.

Just two days before this tragedy, on 22 January, Bhabha had presided over a condolence meeting for Lal Bahadur Shastri at Trombay.

Perhaps the very last letter he signed before his demise was to the late prime minister's widow Lalita Shastri, dated 23 January, where he told her that they had observed 22 January as a full working day, even though it was a Saturday, as a fitting tribute to her husband.

It is said that Shastri had also asked Bhabha to join the Cabinet as a minister, but the latter had declined, preferring his scientific work over a political post.

The news of Bhabha's tragic death and the immersion of Shastri's ashes appeared on the front page on the same day.

Did The CIA Kill Dr Bhabha?

In 2017, Daniel Roche, a Swiss climber, found the remains of an aircraft in the Alps, which could be from either of the two Air India crashes.

Roche, an aviation enthusiast, found a few limbs as well as a jet engine at the site. He believed that Air India flight 101 had been intercepted by another plane and crashed.

According to him, it had collided with an Italian aircraft, and, since there is very little oxygen at that height, there had been no combustion to cause an explosion.

Conspiracy theories implicate the Central Investigative Agency in the crash. In 2008, an alleged conversation between former CIA officer Robert T Crowley and journalist Gregory Douglas (born Peter Stahl) was published in a book, Conversations with the Crow, which led people to believe that the American intelligence agency had a hand in the crash.

Known as 'The Crow' within the agency, Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also known as the 'Department of Dirty Tricks'. In the book, Crowley had been quoted as saying:

'We had trouble, you know, with India back in the 60's when they started work on an atomic bomb bragging how clever they were and how they too were going to be a great power in the world. The thing is, they were getting into bed with the Russians.'

Referring to Bhabha as the 'head expert', he said, that Bhabha was fully capable of building a bomb. He added that Bhabha had been warned several times but had been too arrogant to listen.

Bhabha had made it clear that no one would stop him and India from getting nuclear parity with the big boys.

He went on to add that Bhabha could be a threat. 'He had an unfortunate accident. He was flying to Vienna when his Boeing 707 had a bomb go off in the cargo hold. There was no real evidence and the world was much safer.'

Crowley also allegedly bragged that they could have blown up the plane over Vienna but decided the high mountains were safer.

Crowley's real expertise within the agency was the Soviet KGB. He went on to add something even more alarming.

Calling Shastri 'a political type who started the programme in the first place', he claimed that they did away with Shastri as well.

Since Bhabha was a genius and could get things done, the CIA 'aced both of them'. He added, 'India was quieter after Bhabha...'

The veracity of these startling admissions has not been established, and, in all probability, the truth will never be known. Douglas is an unreliable source at best.

A Nazi sympathizer, conman and Holocaust denier who has been accused of forgery, he has also made a number of other startling revelations with no factual basis. Douglas is considered something of a pariah even among conspiracy theorists.

Undoubtedly, the Americans did not want India to develop a nuclear weapon, but even persons who tend to believe in conspiracy theories would find the murder of 117 people to get rid of one man difficult to digest.

In an interview with Indira Chowdhury, Jamshed Bhabha (Dr Bhabha's younger brother) related that his mother could not get over the fact that Bhabha had actually been booked for a later flight but took the earlier one, which crashed.

It was actually the other way around. Bhabha met his premature end because he changed his initial travel plans and postponed his departure by a day.

Bhabha was to travel on the flight leaving Bombay on 22 January but cancelled at the eleventh hour. The Statesman reported as follows:

'Dr Bhabha had booked his passage on the plane which left Bombay on Saturday, January 22, but he cancelled at the eleventh hour to travel by the ill-fated Boeing.'

There is no doubt that Bhabha was not supposed to travel on that ill-fated flight. Thereby hangs an unverified tale.

R M Lala told me that it was widely believed at the time that Pipsy Wadia (Dr Bhabha's friend and companion) had been the reason why Bhabha had changed his flight at the last moment.

He was unable to give a reason for the change but was certain that Meherbai (Dr Bhabha's mother) held this against Pipsy for the rest of her life.

Excerpted from Homi J Bhabha: A Life by Bakhtiar Dadabhoy with the kind permission of the publishers, Rupa & Co.

Photographs curated by Anant Salvi/Rediff
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff