CBI files charge sheet against five in 1994 ISRO espionage case

Thiruvananthapuram: The CBI has filed a charge sheet against five individuals in a court here in connection with the alleged framing of space scientist Nambi Narayanan in the 1994 ISRO espionage case, sources said on Wednesday.

It is not immediately known who has been charge-sheeted in the case registered in 2021 following the Supreme Court’s directions.

On April 15, 2021, the apex court had ordered that the report of a high-level committee on the role of erring police officials in the 1994 espionage case involving ISRO scientist Narayanan be given to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The Kerala police had registered two cases in October 1994 after Maldivian national Rasheeda was arrested in Thiruvananthapuram for allegedly obtaining secret drawings of ISRO rocket engines to sell to Pakistan.

Narayanan, the then director of the cryogenic project at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), was arrested along with the then ISRO deputy director D Sasikumaran and Fousiya Hasan, a Maldivian friend of Rasheeda.

The CBI probe had found the allegations to be false.

Terming the police action against the former ISRO scientist “psychopathological treatment,” the apex court had, in September 2018, stated that his “liberty and dignity,” basic to his human rights, were jeopardised as he was taken into custody and, despite all the glory of the past, was eventually compelled to face “cynical abhorrence.”