With the CBI saying in its chargesheet that an officer of the Kerala police’s special branch fabricated the 1994 espionage case, former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan, who was among those arrested in the case and later exonerated, said this would inspire confidence in others implicated in false cases.
“I had to fight for 30 years to get justice. I am happy that the case is coming to a conclusion when I am alive. I have fought several cases in various courts to bring to justice those who implicated us in a false case. This fight will give confidence to all those who are being tortured and falsely implicated in cases,” Narayanan said.
ISRO scientists, including Narayanan, and others were arrested in the espionage case in 1994. The CBI, which soon took over the case, submitted a closure report in 1996 in the chief judicial magistrate’s court in Kochi, saying that the allegations of espionage were false. The court then discharged all the accused.
In 2018, the Supreme Court formed a committee headed by former SC judge D K Jain to look into the alleged conspiracy behind the case. In 2021, on the basis of the committee’s report, the court directed the CBI to register a case to investigate the alleged conspiracy by officers of the Kerala police and the Intelligence Bureau.
Last week, the CBI submitted its chargesheet in the case at a court in Thiruvananthapuram. The chargesheet names five accused – S Vijayan, who was an inspector in the police special branch in 1994, former DGP Siby Mathews, former DGP R B Sreekumar, former IB official P S Jayaprakash, and former SP K K Joshua.
The chargesheet alleged that Vijayan, listed as the first accused, had made sexual advances towards a woman from the Maldives at a hotel room in Thiruvananthapuram in 1994. While the woman spurned his advances, he allegedly collected details about her and found that she had contacted ISRO scientist D Sasikumaran over the phone. This was what led to the fabrication of the espionage story, the chargesheet said.
According to the CBI, Vijayan seized the Maldivian woman’s travel documents and prevented her from going back to her country. After filing a case against her for overstaying, Vijayan played a key role in having her later booked under the Official Secrets Act despite there being no evidence of espionage, the agency said.
“This is a clear case of abuse of law/authority right from the initial stage as the victim (the Maldivian woman) was detained illegally and framed in the false overstaying case. To sustain the initial wrongs, another case of a serious nature was launched with false interrogation reports against the victims. These false interrogation reports were used for the arrest of others, including scientists,” the chargesheet said.
Those arrested in the 1994 case were two women from Maldives, ISRO scientists Nambi Narayanan and D Sasikumaran, Russian space agency Glavkosmos’s India representative K Chandrasekhar, and Bengaluru-based labour contractor S K Sharma.
According to the CBI, the arrests were made at the behest of
Siby Mathews, who was then a DIG and was heading a special investigation team formed after the spy case was registered. Mathews was alleged to have allowed physical and mental torture of those arested by IB official while under state police custody.
The CBI also found several other lapses in the conduct of state police and IB officials. Though IB officials had questioned the arrested scientists and others, no interrogation report was prepared. During custody, Nambi Narayanan was allegedly tortured. Inspector Jogesh, who arrested Narayanan, was not allowed to interrogate the scientist, but had to sign a statement given by Siby Mathews, the agency said.
The chargesheet said reports of medical treatment given to Narayanan and Chandrasekhar while in custody were suppressed by then DySP K K Joshwa, another accused in the conspiracy case, at the behest of Siby Mathews.
CBI alleged that former DGP R B Sreekumar, who was working with IB in Kerala in 1994, was responsible for unauthorised custody and torture of the accused. Sreekumar, the fourth accused in the case, had allegedly played an active role in unauthorised questioning of the Maldivian woman at the hotel room, and junior IB officials allegedly acted as per his directive.
The fifth accused in the conspiracy case, P S Jayaprakash, another IB official, tortured Nambi Narayanan, the CBI said.
The CBI recommended the five accused, all former police officers, be prosecuted under section 120B (criminal conspiracy), read with 167, 193, 323, 330, 342 and 354 of the IPC (before amendment). The CBI’s FIR had named 11 others, but in the chargesheet, the agency said no prosecutable evidence could be collected against them.
The CBI said the events that set in motion the fabricated spy case started when, on October 10, 1994, two women from Maldives approached the Thiruvananthapuram City Police Commissioner’s Office seven days before their visas were set to expire. There, Vijayan took their passports and other documents and told them to come again later.
On October 13, according to CBI, Vijayan went to their hotel room and made sexual advances towards one of them, the CBI said. When she spurned the advances, Vijayan left the room but allegedly found that the woman had made calls to Sasikumaran.
The CBI said Vijayan told City Police Commissioner V R Rajeevan about his finding, and the latter informed R B Sreekumar, then deputy director with IB. IB officials then examined the women at the hotel room, but did not find anything suspicious.
According to the chargesheet, the woman Vijayan had made sexual advances to had tickets to fly to the Maldives from Sri Lanka on October 17, but could not go as the officer had taken her ticket and travel documents. On October 20, Vijayan directed the woman to come to the commissioner’s office, where she was told that she was under arrest for overstaying.
The CBI said police had also invited reporters and told them the fabricated espionage story, in which the woman was in touch with Sasikumaran and they were secretly taking out documents related to the PSLV project.
“Vijayan shared the news with the media to create a false narrative about a spy case,” the chargesheet said.
A day before her police custody was to expire on November 14, “based on another false report from Vijajayan, a fresh case (the spy case) was registered against the two women on November 13”, the CBI said. The agency said the FIR had not mentioned any specifics and that there were “no grounds to invoke stringent provisions of the Official Secrets Act”.
Within 20 days of the case being registered, the probe was handed over to the CBI. In 1996, it submitted its closure report in the chief judicial magistrate’s court in Kochi, saying that the allegations of espionage were unproved and false. The court admitted the closure report, leading to the discharge of all the alleged accused.
In May 1996, the then CPI(M)-led government ordered a reinvestigation. Narayanan and others challenged this in the Kerala High Court, which refused to stay the government’s reinvestigation order. Narayanan then appealed in the Supreme Court, which quashed the state government order in 1998.
Since then, the former ISRO scientist has been in a long battle for justice. He moved the National Human Rights Commission, seeking compensation of Rs 1 crore from Kerala police officials who had implicated him. In 2001, the NHRC ordered interim relief of Rs 10 lakh. In 2006, the state government challenged it in the High Court, which in 2012 upheld Narayanan’s contention and ordered the government to give him interim relief of Rs 10 lakh. In October 2013, the Congress-led government decided to give the compensation.
In 2015, Narayanan approached the Supreme Court seeking criminal and disciplinary action against Kerala police officials. The CBI investigation into the alleged conspiracy came from this.
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