Bengaluru/New Delhi Thiruvananthapuram: While senior ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan has detailed how he was framed in the espionage case during the UPA regime over 24 years ago, the Union government Monday requested the Supreme Court to urgently open the Justice D K Jain-led committee’s sealed cover report to the SC on the role of three police officers of Kerala who played the dubious role in destroying the career of a scientist in the cooked up Isro spy case.
Narayanan’s version is that he and his team were on the verge of developing the cryogenic engine technology when the UPA regime played second fiddle to theories of a non-existent spy case planted by vested interests. Russia, then a close ally of India, had mastered the cryogenic engine technology and wanted monopoly.
It was in 1994 that Narayanan and fellow scientist D Sasikumaran were framed by the Kerala police in a cooked up case of leaking secret space research documents to two Maldivian women — Mariam Rasheeda and Fauzia Hasan.. The state was then under a Congress government headed by K Karunakaran.
Narayanan and Sasikumaran had to face the ignominy of being chained and tortured.
However, 24 years after Narayanan was arrested, the SC created history on September 14, 2018, when it invoked its constitutional powers under Article 142 and directed the Kerala government to pay Rs 50 lakh compensation to him for “blatant violation” of his right to life.
The SC not only ordered Kerala to pay the hefty compensation but allowed Narayanan to proceed with his civil suit seeking more damages from the state.
The court also set up an inquiry committee headed by ex-SC judge D K Jain to probe the role of policemen Siby Mathews, K K Joshua and S Vijayan in framing Narayanan in the cooked-up spy case.
On Monday, Solicitor general Tushar Mehta told a Supreme Court bench headed by CJI S A Bobde that the case was of national importance. “He was awarded Rs 50 lakh compensation by the Supreme Court for being framed by police officers in the space research centre case. Please list it for hearing on Tuesday,” the SG said.
While the CJI agreed with the SG that the case was important, the judge said “There is no urgency to list it tomorrow. It will be listed for hearing next week.”
