Kerala told to pay Isro scientist ₹50L penalty over false charges
NEWDELHI :A full 24 years after he was falsely implicated as a spy and arrested by the Kerala police, the Supreme Court on Friday restored the honour of former space scientist S Nambi Narayanan, ordered the state to pay him ₹50 lakh in compensation for putting him to “immense humiliation” and instituted a probe into the fabrication of the case.
“Liberty and dignity of the appellant (Narayanan), which are basic to his human rights were jeopardized as he was taken into custody and, eventually, despite all the glory of the past, was compelled to face cynical abhorrence,” ruled a bench led by chief justice of India Dipak Misra, invoking the public law remedy by granting him compensation.
“The entire prosecution initiated by the State police was malicious and it has caused tremendous harassment and immeasurable anguish to the appellant,” the bench said.
Narayananan,now 76, a scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), was arrested in 1994 on charges of spying by Kerala police. He was later exon- erated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which took over the case on the state government’s order. CBI’s closure report was accepted by a magistrate in May 1996. Although the state attempted to re-investigate the case, it was stopped from doing so by the top court, where Narayanan challenged the move.
“The Supreme Court has clearly stated that it was an illegal arrest. It also identifies and acknowledges the suffering and humiliation I have gone through,” Narayanan said in Thiruvananthapuram. “The highest court of the country has accepted what I said. They (Kerala police) fabricated the case. The technology they said I stole and sold did not even exist then,” he said, responding to the order.