On July 17, 2020, Nandita Haksar, a prominent advocate for civil rights and a lawyer in the Supreme Court, raised an intriguing question in her article titled "Stranger than fiction: Did the CIA carry out clandestine mosquito experiments in 1970s India?" She pondered whether scientific collaboration becomes a battleground where profit-driven politics clash with politics serving the people's interests. Being the daughter of the late P.N. Haksar, a respected bureaucrat, member of the Planning Commission, and Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, she possessed firsthand knowledge of the contentious closure of the Genetic Control of Mosquitoes Unit (GCMU) under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
CIA's Secret Mosquito Experiments In India
In her own words, "It was in this room that I heard many stories of covert operations. That day, a young journalist came by and told my father of a strange experiment with mosquitoes being conducted right near Palam airpo...