By P. Sreekumaran
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It’s a stirring tale of conviction, commitment and confidence: a super star scientist’s 24-year battle to redeem a reputation tarnished by false allegations; a fair name besmirched by a frightening concatenation of circumstances. The legal victory connotes a glorious testament to a man’s courage of conviction and his indomitable will and indefatigable energy.
Indeed, it is the finest hour of Nambi Narayanan, a super star scientist, who was set to scale great heights of glory and fame not only for himself but also for his country, when a sinister conspiracy blighted his career and hurled him into the hell hole of humiliation. The scientist is fully justified in soaking in the euphoria of the moment.
A visibly relieved Nambi Narayanan, however, says the battle is only half won. He wants the three police officers, who fabricated the infamous ISRO espionage case against him, punished. His ire is mainly directed against Sibi Mathews, DIG of Police, who headed the special investigation team that probed the case, the other members being Dy.SP K K Joshua and inspector S Vijayan.
The case against Narayanan, who was Director of the Cryogenic Project of ISRO at the time of his arrest, was that he sold space secrets to Pakistan through two Maldivian women in 1994. Arrested at the age of 53, he was jailed for 50 days. He was reinstated into service after a long legal battle and retired in 2001. But the sheer humiliation of being dubbed a Pakistani spy by the sleuths of IB and the torture he was subjected to by the Kerala police still haunts the scientist.
The Kerala police fabricated a sex scandal involving two Maldivian women and arrested Nambi Narayanan in 1994. Then began a protracted legal battle that culminated in the latest Supreme Court order redeeming him. A CBI probe led to the closure of the case and discharge of Narayanan in 1996. But the Kerala government refused to act against the three police officers although the CBI recommended action against them for arresting Nambi Narayan wrongly.
Political parties have demanded that the probe ordered by the apex court should not be limited to the three police officers. It should investigate the role of former central intelligence officers in the case as the spy case was part of an international conspiracy involving international agencies, including the US, which was against India developing the cryogenic engine technology.
A corollary of the SC verdict will be the storm it has unleashed within the Congress in the state. The espionage case was used by the detractors of the then chief minister K Karunakaran to oust him from power. Their reasoning: Karunakaran stood by his DIG Raman Srivastava, an accused in the ISRO case.
Karunakaran’s daughter Padmaja Venugopal has already fired the first salvo. She is on record that five ‘active politicians’ were behind the spy case which caused the exit of Karunakaran. “I would certainly divulge the names of these politicians before the judicial committee appointed by the SC if I get an opportunity, she averred. Son, K. Muraleedharan, however, was more subdued in his reaction. He said he did not have the details of the conspiracy hatched by his father’s rivals in the Congress. All that he knows, he said, was that Karunakaran was the victim of a political conspiracy hatched by the then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, a man who became the PM thanks to the key role played by Karunakaran!
There is no denying that the verdict and the future disclosures by the interested parties would have an impact of Congress politics in Kerala. The timing of the SC order could not have come at a worse time for the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF), which is struggling to face the crucial 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Kerala politics in general and Congress politics in particular are heading for tumultuous times. (IPA Service)
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