India News | ISRO Spy Case: Kerala HC to Consider Anticipatory Bail Pleas of Ex-cops Next Week

Kochi, Dec 15 (PTI) The Kerala High Court on Thursday sought the response of the CBI on the anticipatory bail plea filed by four people, including a former Director General of Police (DGP), in connection with the 1994 ISRO espionage case.

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The high court said it will consider the matter next week.

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The Supreme Court had on December 2 quashed the Kerala High Court order granting anticipatory bail to the accused and remanded the matter back to the HC and directed it to decide the issue within four weeks.

The apex court had also directed it to decide the petitions "afresh on its own merits".

The SC directive came on the CBI's appeal against the high court order granting bail to former Gujarat DGP, R B Sreekumar, two former police officers of Kerala S Vijayan and Thampi S Durga Dutt, and a retired intelligence official P S Jayaprakash.

Sreekumar was then the Deputy Director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB).

The top court had in November last year issued notice on the CBI's plea filed in the matter.

The agency had said its probe found that some scientists were tortured and framed in the espionage case due to which the development of cryogenic engine was hit, sending back India's space programme by almost one or two decades.

The CBI earlier alleged that there was a clear indication that the accused were part of a team which had ulterior motives to torpedo the attempts of the ISRO for manufacturing the cryogenic engine.

The CBI has registered a case against 18 people for various offences, including criminal conspiracy, in connection with the arrest and detention of Narayanan in the espionage case.

The case, which had hit the headlines in 1994, pertained to allegations of transfer of certain confidential documents on India's space programme to foreign countries by two scientists and four others, including two Maldivian women.

Scientist Nambi Narayanan, who was given a clean chit by the CBI, had earlier alleged that the Kerala police had "fabricated" the case and the technology he was accused to have stolen and sold in the 1994 case did not even exist at that time.

The CBI had said the then top police officials in Kerala were responsible for Narayanan's illegal arrest. The apex court had on September 14, 2018 appointed a three-member committee while directing the Kerala government to cough up a Rs 50 lakh compensation for compelling Narayanan to undergo “immense humiliation”.

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