HC grants pre-arrest bail to four in Isro fake spying case

The Kerala high court on Friday granted anticipatory bail to four former police and intelligence officers in connection with the case related to the alleged conspiracy to frame former ISRO aerospace scientist and Padma Bhushan awardee Dr Nambi Narayanan. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in June booked former Intelligence Bureau (IB) deputy director RB Sreekumar and 16 other police personnel over the alleged conspiracy to frame Narayanan.

A single bench of Justice Ashok Menon granted the bail to former Kerala police officers S Vijayan, Durgadutt as well as Sreekumar, and another former IB official S Jayaprakash.

The CBI and two Maldivian women, who were also implicated in the case, opposed their bail pleas. Additional solicitor general SV Raju, who appeared for the CBI, told the high court that it was a serious case and some foreign agencies, including Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence, were involved in the conspiracy to sabotage the country’s cryogenic project that Narayanan was a part of in the 1990s.

The court asked the agency to produce evidence in this regard. The CBI said it will produce the proof when the case progresses.

The 16 were booked two months after the Supreme Court in April ordered the CBI to investigate the conspiracy behind the framing. It called the matter “serious” and said it requires “deeper investigation” into the role of the officers responsible. The top court accepted the report of a committee it constituted in 2018 to probe the circumstances that led to the alleged framing. Narayanan, 79, was arrested in 1994 in the alleged espionage case.

“Happy, the court has granted bail to us. I really feel the case was not investigated properly. More charges against Narayanan will come up in coming days,” said S Vijayan.