HC: Give Rs 10L to Nambi as compensation

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The Kerala high court on Friday directed the state government to award a compensation of Rs 10 lakh, as ordered by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), to former senior ISRO scientist S. Nambi Narayanan, who had been acquitted in a spy case.

The compensation should be paid in three weeks’ time, a division bench of justice C.N. Ramachandran Nair and Justice C.K. Abdul Rahim ordered.

The bench also vacated an earlier order by the NHRC to take action against the then investigating officers, including former ADGP Sibi Mathews, who had probed the ISRO case in its initial stages in the mid 1990s.

The bench passed the order while considering an appeal filed by Nambi Narayanan, who challenged a single bench order quashing the NHRC order.

The government contended that the commission had directed grant of compensation solely on the basis of the findings of the CBI and that, no inquiry was conducted before passing the order.

The single judge quashed the NHRC order holding that the senior scientist should have filed a petition before the NHRC one year after the course of the action.

It also asked the NHRC to consider the maintainability of the complaint filed by Narayanan. But, Narayanan pointed out that the apex court acquitted him of all the charges only in 1998, and he filed a plea soon after, on April 29 the same year.

According to the petitioner, he was arrested by the police on November 30, 1994 and was in judicial custody for around two months.

Apart from the physical torture he had faced during the interrogation, the mental torture continued even after he was released on bail, the scientist submitted. The court upheld the contentions.

Consul for the central government, T Sanjay, submitted that the Centre had issued notices to nine Intelligence Bureau officials in this regard.

The sensational case of 1994 was first probed by the state police amid a questionable media hype bordering on sensationalism, and later it was handed over to the CBI.

The CBI, in its final charge sheet made it clear that no espionage as alleged in the complaint had taken place in the ISRO.

In 1998, the Supreme Court found that the allegations of espionage were false. It acquitted Nambi Narayanan another senior scientist D Sasikumaran, as also two Bangalore-based businessmen SK Sharma and Chandrasekharan, former IGP Ramon Srivastava and two Maldivian women -- Mariam Rasheeda and Fouzia Hassan.