Haritha John| The News Minute| October 20, 2014| 3.00 pm IST
On October 20, 1994 the Kerala police arrested a Maldivian woman named Mariam Rasheeda on charges of over staying in India after her visa expired. Soon, the visa case metamorphosed into the biggest sex-spy scandal of the country, implicating two senior ISRO scientists, two businessmen and two women. The scientists and businessmen were accused of selling India's cryogenic secrets to the women who were acting as spies for Russia, ISI and others.
More than six years after Rasheeda’s arrest, the Supreme Court of India upheld a CBI investigation which concluded that the so-called sex scandal had been fabricated by three police officers form Kerala who first investigated the case and reprimanded the Kerala government over the whole episode.
Fourteen years after the Supreme Court’s direction, the Kerala government has done nothing to initiate action against the investigating officers who fabricated the entire sex scandal where there was none.
On Monday, the 20th anniversary of Rasheeda’s arrest, the Kerala High Court has once again directed the state government to initiate action against those who set in motion the whole ordeal for those implicated.
Will the BJP make a move to initiate action against the officers?
In the run up to the Lok Sabha elections the BJP had demanded that action be taken against the investigating officers, one of whom was R B Sreekumar who is now retired. He was an IPS officer of the Gujarat cadre and had leveled charges of fake encounter deaths against the Gujarat government.
One of those implicated in the case, Dr. Nambi Narayanan (71), a former senior scientist with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has been demanding action against those who fabricated the case against for a long time.
Nambi Narayanan had met Narendra Modi in Thiruvananthapuram in September 2013. After this meeting, the BJP had demanded prosecution of IB officers who were involved in the investigation of ISRO espionage case. Now he is 71, as per his words no political party has so far come to his help. He has openly said he is ready to accept the BJP’s help to get justice.
The UPA government had given R B Sreekumar a clean chit in 2004 in the spy scandal case. Now that the BJP is in power at the centre, it remains to be seen whether it will initiate any action in the case.
In January this year Nambi Narayanan had written to the Home Secretary during the UPA’s term, asking the government to take action against the officers.
The ISRO Spy Scandal
Police barged into his house one day in November and took him into custody. In the presence of his whole family, he was dragged into a police vehicle. He was taken to a government guest house instead of a police station. There in a dark room the interrogation began, police inflicted physical, mental torture for three days, Dr. Narayanan alleged.
The arrest of Dr. Narayanan along with D Sasikumaran, another ISRO scientist, two Maldivian women, and two businessmen accused of being part of an espionage ring, terrorized the entire ISRO community.
In 1996, the CBI found the allegations baseless and recommended action against the IB and SIT officials, who had investigated the case which still remain unimplemented. Narayanan had spent 50 days in jail in connection with the case.
The main charge against Narayanan was that he had sold the technology for cryogenic engines to an agency in Russia through the Maldivian women, Mariam Rasheeda and Fousiya Hassan. Kerala police along with Intelligence Bureau did the investigation and the arrested were tortured and humiliated till they got the bail according to the reports.
The police fed the media conspiracy theories about India’s space technology being smuggled out by a network of scientists like Narayanan and spies like Mariam Rasheeda and Fauzia Hassan. No one bothered to verify the intelligence handouts, Kerala newspapers lapped up the story by adding sensational information on the two women.
When the case was handed over to the CBI, they found out that the scandal was all cooked up by Kerala Police and IB.
In 2001 National Human Rights Commission had granted him a compensation of Rs 10 lakh, but he got it only after a long legal battle in 2012, 18 years after the incident. Narayanan’s simple living standards were noted by the CBI during the interrogation and later stated it in the closure report. Politicians, police and media are equally responsible for his loss in life, career and reputation.
Nambi Narayanan was eventually reinstated and continued to work in ISRO till his retirement in 2001. But he was never given an important assignment, connected to cryogenic engines.