Based on the Supreme Court’s directions, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered an FIR against Kerala police personnel for allegedly framing ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan in the 1994 ISRO spy case, officials said on Monday.
The apex court, on April 15, ordered that the report of a high-level committee on the role of the erring police officials in the 1994 espionage case relating to ISRO scientist Narayanan be given to the CBI.
It had earlier directed the agency to conduct further investigation on the issue.
In October 1994, the Kerala police had registered two cases after Maldivian national Rasheeda was arrested in Thiruvananthapuram for allegedly obtaining secret drawings of ISRO rocket engines to sell to Pakistan.
Narayanan, the then director of the cryogenic project at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), was arrested, along with the then ISRO deputy director D Sasikumaran and Fousiya Hasan, another Maldivian national and a friend of Rasheeda.
The CBI probe had found the allegations against Narayanan and Sasikumaran to be false.
D Chandrasekhar, the Russian Space Agency Glavkosmos’ India representative, was arrested in the false spy case along with Narayanan and Sasikumaran. He passed away just hours before the Supreme Court announced the ₹50 lakh compensation to Narayanan in 2018. The last two decades of his life, Chandrasekhar had been living in Vidyaranyapura in north Bengaluru as a recluse after the torture he underwent under trial by the Kerala Police and the IB.
Last month, Hasan, who now resides in Sri Lanka, said in an interview with a Sri Lankan TV channel she was forced to falsely implicate the two ISRO scientists.
Terming the police action against the former ISRO scientist “psycho-pathological treatment”, India’s apex court had, in September 2018, said his “liberty and dignity”, basic to his human rights, were jeopardised as he was taken into custody and, eventually, despite all the glory of the past, he was compelled to face “cynical abhorrence”.
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