It’s been 20 years since India stunned the world with

Pokhran

II. It wasn’t the fact that India had nuclear technology, but the realisation that India was able to conduct these tests without the rest of the world not having a clue as to what was going on in a remote location in Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer, despite having the place under constant satellite surveillance. In an exclusive interview with Chethan Kumar, Colonel Gopal Kaushik, formerly of the 58th Engineering regiment, talks about those groundbreaking tests.

Scientists and soldier: Gopal Kaushik with the late former president,

APJ Abdul Kalam

, who served as the joint project coordinator for Pokhran II

Members of 58 regiments with scientists

One of the blasts site in Pokhran

“Before we start, I want you to assure me that my location won’t be made public,” Colonel Gopal Kaushik (retired) said, sitting in his living room, somewhere in South India. Twenty years after the regiment he was commanding – the 58th Engineers Regiment – ensured the successful nuclear tests that put India on the map of nations with nuclear arms capability, he still has some untold stories.Code named Operation Shakti, the 1998 tests in Pokhran were the second time India tested its nuclear capability, following on from the failed efforts in 1995-96 when the country had to put off the tests owing to international pressure led by the US as details of the tests got leaked.The challenges, therefore, were many, unlike in 1974 when India under Indira Gandhi carried out the first test – code named ‘Smiling Buddha’. In 1974, India’s intention and capability were unknown, the test location preparations remained unknown, and the US did not have satellites that could keep an eye on developments around the world.But by the time Atal Bihari Vajpayee occupied the Prime Minister’s chair, India had demonstrated that it had nuclear capability—although the 1974 tests were officially never meant for weapons—and the entire world knew of Pokhran as the test site and powerful US satellites were already in the sky.So, when “Buddha Smiled” again on May 11 and 13 of 1998, there were a lot of stories. And, of the many stories around Operation Shakti, the most popular has been how India handed US’ Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ) its significant defeat, keeping the spying agency completely in the dark.But some of the little known facts about the tests are here: The 58th Regiment that was responsible for carrying out the tests and keeping it a secret used cricket, practically a religion in India and billiards, to deceive spying satellites and saving the bomb, respectively.“The security of information and activities from satellites, spies on the ground and even the general public and our troops was paramount given the leaks earlier, but along with that we also had to create and maintain six shafts as opposed to one in 1974,” Kaushik said.About a hundred scientists, led by the former chairman of the atomic commission, R Chidambaram, former Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) chief Anil Kakodkar , former president and then Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) chief APJ Abdul Kalam, and DRDO adviser K Santhanam, Kaushik and his men worked cautiously.The 58th Regiment had a vast high security area with periphery of outer fence measuring 24 km, with an intermediate fence of 11 km and inner fence of 6 km. Everything was on a need-to -know basis as they knew that they were being watched.From code names to decoy security posts and from carrying out work in the night and returning equipment to their spots before the satellites came back to track in the morning, the army was literally working in camouflage in extreme weather conditions—temperatures going up to 51 degrees Celsius in summers and minus three in the winters — in a place infested by snakes and scorpions.There were plenty of challenges that gave rise to several innovations and strategies, Kaushik said, as he collected water apples from his garden tree to offer. As he washed the apples, he said that one important strategy was to make the spies and satellites believe that everything they did was routine.“Among the things we did was routinely play cricket, although it isn’t really a troops sport like football or hockey. That was done purely to attract people to watch and mislead the satellites that nothing significant was happening in Pokhran,” Kaushik said.There were also several innovations. “One was to channelise the sub-soil water entering and getting collected in the shafts meant for the tests. There were some shafts that were already built as early 1981, and the 58th Regiment too built shafts in record time. In one of the older shafts, at about 100 metres inside we found a lot of groundwater collected. This meant that our men had to wear special raincoats to go inside and work, which was extremely difficult given the heat. The brackish water also meant corrosion of the metal used inside the shafts. We knew we couldn’t stop the water but we had to prevent it from raining inside. So, my company commander Major (now Brigadier) Suneeth Sharma and I executed a plan, which involved creating channels at every 100 metres of the 800-odd feet shaft. The water would then collect in the well below the canteen (a storage place built to hold the bombs) that had to be pumped out every day,” he said.But that didn’t solve the problem completely as the pumped out water could not be released onto the sand as it would have changed colour which would be observed by the satellites.“We couldn’t let the satellites see that we were pumping out water as it would indicate activity. Therefore, we had to bury a host of pipes under the sand to carry the pumped water away from the shafts and to sand dunes as they absorbed the water,” Kaushik said.There were several other innovations, but the one without which there would be no Operation Shakti, was the “Billiards Sticks Concept”With most things ready, it was time to fill up the shaft, up to the level of the canteen with sand. However, the team could not just drop sandbags from the mouth of the shaft as it could potentially damage the canteen, even the bomb, with its impact. So, in January 1998, Kaushik had conducted an experiment of lowering sand bags using a cage.“...We’d found that it took us about one minute to place one bag. We needed to place 6,000 bags, which meant it would have taken at least six or seven days if we worked normally and five days if we worked without breaks. We didn’t have that luxury as the satellites would pick it up. In 1995-96 the satellites had picked up half-a-day’s work,” he said.When the time arrived, Kaushik and Sharma came up with the “Billiards Sticks Concept”. “The name was given later by Santhanam, as what we did was inspired by the way cue sticks used to be arranged in Billiard parlours,” Kaushik recollected.What the team did was to arrange six metal pipes—filled with sand to make them strong—at the door of the canteen as a barricade allowing sand to be dropped from the mouth of the shaft. “We had barricaded the canteen with these pipes after the bombs were placed and then dropped the sand down. Without this, the Buddha wouldn’t have smiled again,” Kaushik said.A lot has happened since the Summer of 1998, but the stories from Pokhran in that year never fails to capture the audience.