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S Nambi Narayanan, a former senior Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientist who was accused of espionage by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Kerala Police in 1994 and later exonerated, has recently published his autobiography detailing his hardships as an accused.
Narayanan, who continues to fight legal battles against the IB and Kerala Police for falsely implicating him in a case of espionage and torturing him, has demanded a thorough investigation to uncover the motivations behind the case.
Narayanan, indicating that ‘some of the superpowers’ did not want India to evolve in the field of cryogenic technology, told The Quint:
Thus, Narayanan stated that the espionage case set back India’s progress in cryogenic technology by around 15 years. According to the former scientist, there was a foreign power or agency behind the conspiracy.
On 20 October 1994, Mariam Rasheeda, a Maldivian national working with the Maldives Police department’s intelligence wing was taken into custody in Thiruvananthapuram, on charges of overstaying without valid documents. It was also found that she had had telephonic exchanges with an ISRO scientist, D Sasikumar.
On 15 November 1994, a Special Investigative Team (SIT) led by Siby Mathews, who was then a DIG with the Kerala Police, took over the case.
At the time, based on Rasheeda and Hassan’s statements, others including scientist Sasikumar, Indian representative of Glavkosmos, Chandrashekaran, Bangalore-based businessman SK Sharma, and Nambi Narayanan were arrested.
On 2 December, the case was transferred to the CBI based on the recommendations of the Kerala Police.
The CBI filed its report in 1996, accusing the IB and the Kerala Police of fabricating a false case. Sasikumar and Mariam were found to have had mere social exchanges which didn’t pose any threat to the nation. Narayanan didn’t even know the women who were forced to state his name under torture, according to the CBI. The report also recommended action against the former investigators. The police were criticised for allowing the IB to participate in the interrogation.
On 29 April 1998, the Supreme Court removed the criticism against the CBI from the High Court order and called out the Kerala government for conducting a re-investigation in the meantime.
After the Supreme Court order, Narayanan began his fight for justice against the then interrogators, who were with the IB and the state police, and a filed a defamation suit against the officers. The National Human Rights Commission had ordered the government to compensate Narayanan.
Narayanan has maintained that the possibility of espionage was non-existent.
When contacted, Mathew John, the then Director of the Kerala unit of the IB refused to respond. However, RB Sreekumar, former Gujarat DGP who was the then deputy director of IB in Kerala, said the investigation was deliberately destroyed.
Sreekumar says that espionage cases are usually investigated by the IB. In this case, the Maldivian women worked in their intelligence wing and had documents in their native language. IB had the relevant language and technical experts.
Siby Mathews, former DIG with the Kerala Police and ex-chief in the case, stood by the decision to arrest the scientists.
Rasheeda and Hassan had mentioned the roles of the key accused, including that of Narayanan, added Siby Mathews.
Mathews cites a few reasons for Narayanan’s arrest. The latter had submitted his resignation to ISRO, just ten days after Rasheeda’s arrest. Narayanan had asked to be relieved of his duties within ten days. “We were apprehensive that he might leave the country,” Mathews says. Later, Mathews had recommended a CBI inquiry into the case. “If I had a sinister motive and had falsely framed them, would I have done that?” asks Mathew.
Mathews denies the allegations of torture and says that Narayanan, when produced before the judicial magistrate, had said that he wasn’t tortured. Later, the Kerala High Court had viewed some of the interrogation videos and observed that the accused had spoken to the investigators in a relaxed manner and not under pressure.
PA Vishwambharan, a former IB officer who claims to have been involved in the interrogation (confirmed by RB Sreekumar), says that there were a total of 70 videos of the interrogation. However, both the CBI report and Narayanan have denied Vishwambharan’s role.
In response to the allegations, Narayanan says that he was produced before a magistrate after a few days in CBI custody. “The magistrate pointed to the CBI officers and asked me if they had tortured me. I said the CBI did not torture me. That doesn’t mean the IB hadn’t tortured me,” said Narayanan who is amused with the arguments put forward by Mathews, after being exonerated by the CBI.
“They had found me innocent after a thorough investigation. It is unfortunate to justify my arrest after this,” Narayanan said. Similarly, Narayanan questions the IB’s role in the interrogation.
“If Sreekumar remembers one of them, he should disclose the names of the other IB officials,” demanded Narayanan.
“All those aspects were looked into by the CBI after which they exonerated me,” says Narayanan.
(The writer is a former journalist with The Times of India, Coimbatore, and currently works as a researcher.)
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