Shocking Jain panel report emerges; Conspiracy against Nambi Narayanan exposed?

Justice D K Jain Committee report stated ‘he was arrested by Kerala police in 1994 without any material or record to show his involvement in the ‘espionage’.

Senior Kerala police officials had allegedly framed former space scientist Nambi Narayanan in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) espionage case of 1994. The Supreme Court had on September 14, 2018 appointed a three-member panel headed by its former judge DK Jain to investigate the case. Justice D K Jain Committee report stated ‘he was arrested by Kerala police in 1994 without any material or record to show his involvement in the ‘espionage’. The committee found the arrests of other ISRO scientists B Sasikumaran and K Chandrasekharan, and labour contractor S K Sharma too were without any proof. Adetailed investigation into the physical and mental torture of Nambi and Chandrasekharan by interrogators was suggested by panel delving into the conspiracy angle in the espionage case.

The portion of the report is part of the FIR filed by the CBI before the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court, Thiruvananthapuram, on June 17. The case, which had made headlines in 1994, pertained to accusations of selling state secrets like confidential test data from rocket and satellite launches to foreign countries by two scientists and four others, including two Maldivians.

The seventh paragraph of the FIR cited the report and stated the undocumented interrogation of Maldivian Mariyam Rashida was illegal. The report also cited “deliberate leaking of information to the press by the investigating agency to create a narrative incriminating the scientists”. Scientist Narayanan had also informed the panel “there was deliberate attempt to remove him from the development of Cryogenic technology and there was a design to harm the ISRO cryogenic technology project”.