Kochi (Kerala): Four persons accused in the infamous ISRO conspiracy case have been granted anticipatory bail by the Kerala High court.
The court granted relief to R.B. Sreekumar, P.S. Jayaprakash, Thampi. S.Durga Dutt and Vijayan, who were the police officers investigating the case and presided over the arrest of ISRO Scientist Nambi Narayanan and others. The relief was given by the single judge bench of Justice Ashok Menon.
Senior Advocate S.V. Raju who appeared for the CBI had opposed the bail plea saying that the accused who are former police officers could influence the witnesses and affect the collection of material evidence.
The Additional Solicitor General even argued that there is a possibility that this conspiracy was hatched by forces inimical to India and foreign intelligence agencies might be involved in framing scientists in ISRO who were involved in developing indigenous cutting edge technology.
The petitioner's lawyer argued that it has been 25 years since the incidents associated with the case happened and the accused have retired and are aged, hence there was no need for custodial interrogation of the accused. The lawyer also submitted that the accused will cooperate with the investigations.
READ: Court rejects plea against former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan
The case first surfaced in 1994 when ISRO scientist S. Nambi Narayanan was arrested on charges of espionage along with another senior ISRO official, two Maldivian women and a businessman.
Narayan was freed by the CBI in 1995 and since then he has been fighting a legal battle against those who falsely implicated him. Things changed for him better after numerous long-drawn court battles when the Supreme Court in 2020 appointed a three-member committee headed by retired judge Justice D.K. Jain to probe if there was a conspiracy among the then police officials to falsely implicate Narayanan.
On June 28, a new team of the CBI from New Delhi arrived in the state capital to look at the case from a different angle, and ascertain if there was any conspiracy on the part of the probe teams of the Kerala Police and the IB.
The list of accused in the FIR includes former Gujarat DGP and then IB Deputy Director, R.B. Sreekumar, Kerala's former DGP Siby Mathews, besides other police officials which include Vijayan, Durgadutt, and K.K. Joshua, who were all from the local police, first registered the ISRO spy case.
Apart from Mathews, another official whose name figures in the FIR has also secured anticipatory bail
Narayanan has now received a compensation of Rs 1.9 crore, for suffering wrongful imprisonment, malicious prosecution and humiliation, from various agencies, including the Kerala government, which, in 2020, paid him Rs 1.3 crore and later awarded another Rs 50 lakh as directed by the Supreme Court in 2018, and another Rs 10 lakh as directed by the National Human Rights Commission.
