ISRO case sprung from SP’s vendetta after Maldivian woman refused his advances: CBI

After nearly thirty years, the 1994 ISRO espionage case which falsely implicated and imprisoned renowned space scientist Nambi Narayanan and two Maldivian women is said to have been fabricated, according to a CBI report, which states that the case was initiated after a Maldivian woman, who was illegally detained, rejected the advances of then-SP S Vijayan.

The charge sheet made public on Wednesday, accuses retired SP S Vijayan of initiating the false case to justify the illegal detention of a Maldivian woman who had rejected his advances.

The CBI's charge sheet, filed in late June, names five former police officers for allegedly framing Narayanan and five others, including two Maldivian women, in the espionage scandal.

According to the CBI, Vijayan took away the travel documents and air tickets of Mariyam Rasheeda, a Maldivian national, preventing her from leaving India after she spurned his advances. Vijayan discovered Rasheeda's connection with ISRO scientist D Shasikumaran and used this information to mount surveillance on Rasheeda and her friend Fauzia Hasan.

Despite the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau (SIB) officers finding nothing suspicious during their examination of the women, Vijayan, with the knowledge of the Commissioner of Police Thiruvananthapuram and SIB Deputy Director, arrested Rasheeda under the Foreigners Act for overstaying in India without a valid visa.

As Rasheeda's custody was about to expire, Vijayan submitted a false report, implicating her and Hasan in a case under the Official Secrets Act, thus transferring their custody to a Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed to probe the espionage issue.

In the charge sheet, the CBI has said that its probe revealed that the espionage case was an “abuse of law right from the initial stage” when Maldivian national Mariyam Rasheeda was detained illegally and framed for overstaying in the country for allegedly spurning the advances of Vijayan.

“To sustain the initial wrongs, another case of serious nature was launched with false interrogation reports against the victims (including Narayanan and others),” the agency has said in its final report recommending the prosecution of former DGPs R B Sreekumar and Siby Mathews, former SPs S Vijayan and K K Joshua and ex-intelligence officer P S Jayaprakash.

The agency has charged them under various provisions of the IPC including sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 342 (wrongful confinement), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 330 (voluntarily causing hurt to extract a confession), 167 (public servant framing an incorrect document), 193 (giving false evidence), 354 (outrage modesty of a woman).

The agency, however, did not recommend prosecution of the other 13 accused, including then Kerala police and IB officers, in the case as no evidence was available against them.

Reacting to the development, Narayanan on Wednesday said that as an individual he was not concerned whether the charge-sheeted former police and IB officers were punished or not as his role in the matter was over.

“They have already been punished. They are already suffering. I have no desire that they should go to jail. I do not even expect an apology from them. I would have been happy if they just said that they had made a mistake,” Narayanan told reporters.

The scientist said that his innocence was revealed in 1996 and since then he fought a legal battle for 20 years to find out who was behind the conspiracy to frame him.

“I have proved my innocence. My work is over,” he said. The case regarding the conspiracy to frame Narayanan was registered in 2021 on the Supreme Court’s directions.

On April 15, 2021, the apex court ordered that the report of a high-level committee on the role of erring police officials in the 1994 espionage case involving ISRO scientist Narayanan be given to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The Kerala police had registered two cases in October 1994 after Maldivian national Mariyam 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, a Maldivian friend of Rasheeda.

The CBI probe had found the allegations to be false.

With PTI inputs