Kochi: Two DGPs and four other officials who were part of the probe team in the ISRO spy case were granted anticipatory bail by Kerala High Court. The CBI had charged them with conspiring and fabricating documents.
The accused cannot travel abroad and will have to pay a security bond of Rs 1 lakh each for the bail. The case has been posted for January 27.
The CBI opposed granting bail to former Kerala DGP Siby Mathews and former Gujarat DGP R.B. Sreekumar. The four others were probe officials of the Kerala Police and the Intelligence Bureau. The central investigation agency in July 2022 registered an FIR with the Thiruvananthapuram Chief Judicial Magistrate's Court against 18 people who investigated the case.
The ISRO spy case took place in 1994 when Nambi Narayanan, a top ISRO scientist was arrested on charges of espionage. He was exonerated by the CBI in 1995 and joined back the space agency. He pursued the wrongdoing legally and in 2020, the Supreme Court appointed a three-member committee headed by retired judge Justice D.K. Jain to investigate if there was a conspiracy to falsely implicate the scientist.
Narayanan has been compensated by various agencies including the Kerala government because he had to suffer wrongful imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and humiliation.