THE ISRO espionage case, which began with the arrest of a Maldivian woman in Thiruvananthapuram in October 1994 and was confirmed as a hoax by the Supreme Court in 1998, marks one of the darkest episodes in the history of the police and the press in India. The Central Bureau of Investigation had in early 1996 exposed the sensational lies and half-truths leaked out by investigators of the Kerala Police and the Intelligence Bureau and published with spicy embellishments by a section of the local media. But by the time the Supreme Court confirmed its findings, the victims of the false case had paid a heavy price (Frontline, May 22, 1998).
The case was used by the then opposition parties and the detractors of Chief Minister K. Karunakaran in his Congress party to force him to step down. It played havoc with the lives and careers of two scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation, S. Nambi Narayanan and D. Sasikumaran, and it destroyed the lives of four others, Bangalore-based businessmen K. Chandrasekharan and S.K. Sarma and Maldivian women Mariam Rasheeda and Fousia Hassan. The case also unsettled the career of a senior IPS officer, Raman Srivastava, against whom Karunakaran had refused to take action without sufficient evidence of involvement.
None of the victims except Nambi Narayanan chose to pursue the case or the questions that it left unanswered: Who made up those fantastic tales and why? Who would compensate the victims and their families for their ordeal? At the end of a long phase in his ongoing legal battle, on September 7, a Division Bench of the Kerala High Court directed the State government to pay Nambi Narayanan an interim compensation of Rs.10 lakhas ordered by the National Human Rights Commission in 2001 while hearing a petition for Rs.1 crore in damages filed by him. The courts direction has revived demands for a proper inquiry into the origin and dubious motivations of the 18-year-old case.
In its latest order, the High Court also annulled a direction of the NHRC to the State government to report on the action taken against the delinquent officers who had committed gross violation of human rights. Instead, the court directed the commission to consider action against the officers after giving them an opportunity for being heard, when it took up the issue of final relief to Nambi Narayanan.
A CBI report submitted to the State government 15 years ago proposed action against the police officers but successive governments just sat on it. In early 2011, the Congress-led government decided that it was not proper or legal to take action against the officials for the alleged lapses pointed out in the report 15 years earlier.
R. KrishnakumarCOMMents
COMMents
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