New Delhi:
A high-level probe panel appointed by the Supreme Court to take erring cops to task for causing “tremendous harassment” and “immeasurable anguish” to ISRO scientist Dr Nambi Narayanan in the 1994 espionage case has submitted its report to the top court, sources told news agency Press Trust Of India.
The Supreme Court had on September 14, 2018 appointed the three-member panel headed by its former judge D K Jain while directing the Kerala government to cough up Rs 50 lakh compensation for compelling Mr Narayanan to undergo “immense humiliation”.
The scientist was arrested when the Congress was heading the government in Kerala. The panel, after investigation, submitted its report in a sealed cover to the top court recently.
The Central Bureau of Investigation, in its probe, had held that the then top police officials in Kerala were responsible for Mr Narayanan’s illegal arrest.
The case also had its political fallout, with a section in the Congress targeting the then Chief Minister late K Karunakaran over the issue, that eventually led to his resignation.
Over a period of almost two-and-a-half years, the panel headed by Justice Jain examined the circumstances leading to the arrest.
The espionage case, which had hit the headlines in 1994, pertained to allegations of transfer of certain confidential documents on India”s space programme to foreign countries by two scientists and four others, including two Maldivian women.
The 79-year-old former scientist, who was given a clean chit by the CBI, maintained that the Kerala Police had “fabricated” the case and the technology he was accused to have stolen and sold in the 1994 case did not even exist at that time.
Mr Narayanan had approached the top court against a Kerala High Court judgement that said “no action needed to be taken” against former DGP Siby Mathews, who was then heading the SIT probe team, two retired superintendents of police, K K Joshua and S Vijayan, and the then Deputy Director, Intelligence Bureau, R B Shreekumar, who were later held responsible by the CBI for the scientist’s illegal arrest.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a press release)