India's nuclear power a 'myth'

India's status as a nuclear power has been described as a "myth" by the scientist who carried out its controversial hydrogen bomb tests in 1998.

He said the device had only "fizzled". The claims by the test director K Santhanam have provoked an outcry in India which treasures its nuclear status as a symbol of its power in Asia where it has been locked in an arms race with both Pakistan and China.

The Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh recently unveiled India's first nuclear submarine as a statement of its naval ambitions.

But according to K. Santhanam, who directed the secret detonations of five Shakt' nuclear devices at their nuclear test site at Pokhran, in the Rajasthan desert, the true test results were covered up and falsely hailed as a success by the Hindu nationalist BJP government.

At the time the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declared: "India is now a nuclear weapons state. We have the capacity for a big bomb now." More