The Supreme Court overturned a Kerala High Court order on pre-arrest bail for five accused in the ISRO spy case on Friday, including a former top cop. Former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientist Nambi Narayanan is accused of espionage in 1994. The Supreme Court has ordered that the high court in the southern state reconsider their bail application within four weeks. It has been noted that the accused will not be arrested during the interim period of five weeks.
In 1994, the scientist was falsely accused of selling vital secrets related to the country’s space technology to Pakistan. While he was eventually acquitted by a CBI court and the Supreme Court in 1998, he had spent 50 days in jail with fellow scientist D Sasikumar and four others. The Supreme Court awarded him Rs. 50 lakh in 2018 for “unnecessary arrest, harassment, and mental cruelty.”
The Kerala government also paid an additional compensation of 1.30 crore to the former scientist in the case, which has also been the subject of several political squabbles, in 2020.
In June of the same year, the CBI charged former Intelligence Bureau (IB) deputy director RB Sreekumar and 16 other police officers in connection with the alleged conspiracy. Former Kerala Police officer S Vijayan, one of more than a dozen accused, filed a plea in the case in the Kerala High Court last year. In his petition to the high court in July 2021, the former police officer claimed that Narayanan influenced the CBI investigation by entering into land deals worth crores with the agency’s then-investigating officials. Months later, in November, the petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court.
