The Supreme Court on Friday awarded a compensation of Rs 50 lakh to former ISRO scientist S Nambi Narayanan whose life got ruined after he was falsely implicated in the 1994 ISRO spy scandal.
The Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra–which had reserved its verdict on July 10 on his petition seeking action against former Kerala DGP Siby Mathews and other police officers who allegedly falsely implicated him in the case–set up a three-member panel to probe the allegations.
The probe panel will have one officer each from the Centre and Kerala.
Narayanan (76) had challenged a Kerala High Court verdict that said no action was needed against former DGP Mathews and two retired Superintendents of Police, KK Joshua and S Vijayan for his illegal arrest.
On behalf of the CBI, Additional Solicitor General Vikramjit Banerjee had contended during the hearing that no allegation had been made by Narayanan that he was tortured or harassed during the investigation by the CBI.
“We have nothing to hide. There is no need for us to pay compensation to Nambi Narayanan. Let there be a Supreme Court-monitored probe,” Banerjee had said.
Kerala Police had arrested Mariam Rasheeda, a Maldivian woman, on October 20, 1994 for overstaying in India after the expiry of her visa. It turned into a sex-spy scandal allegedly involving two senior ISRO scientists, some businessmen and others. They were accused of passing on ISRO’s cryogenic programme secrets to the woman who in turn supplied them to Russia and Pakistan’s ISI.
In 1996, the CBI probe cleared all the accused. It concluded that the entire scandal was fabricated by Kerala Police officers who had investigated the case. All the accused were discharged in May 1996. Along with the closure report, the CBI had also sent a confidential report indicting the state police officials.
But following a change of guard in Kerala, the state government withdrew the consent given to the CBI to probe the case and asked the state police to re-investigate it.
However, the Supreme Court in April 1998 quashed the state government’s decision and all the accused were freed. Rasheeda, too, was released in 2001. The Kerala High Court had in September 2012 ordered the state government to pay Rs 10 lakh as interim relief to Narayanan.
Acting on his petition, the Kerala High Court had in October 2014 ordered action against the state police officials based on the CBI’s confidential report. But a Division Bench of the High Court reversed the order in March 2015.
It’s this Division Bench verdict that Narayanan has been fighting against in the top court.
“The system I designed is being used in Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan and PSLV that launched 104 satellites in one go. But I am still fighting to get justice,” Narayanan had earlier told The Tribune during the hearing.
