ISRO spy case: 2 Maldivian women also oppose bail plea of former Kerala top cop
They requested the court to hear them before taking a decision on Mathew’s bail plea and added they were framed and tortured
Two Maldivian women, who were arrested and later acquitted in the 1994 Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) espionage case, on Wednesday approached the Thiruvananthapuram district court opposing the anticipatory bail plea of former Kerala police chief Sibi Mathew, who was among the police personnel booked last month over the alleged conspiracy to frame scientist Nambi Narayanan in the matter.
The Central Bureau of Investigation filed a First Information Report against Mathew, former Intelligence Bureau (IB) deputy director R B Sreekumar and 16 other police personnel for allegedly framing Narayanan.
Police arrested Narayanan and Sasikumaran Nair after their numbers were found in a diary recovered from the two Maldivian women, Mariyam Rasheeda and Fousia Hassan. The two were first arrested in 1994 on charges of overstaying in the country.
In their petition, Rasheeda and Hassan said they suffered due to the case and spent three years in jail in Kerala. They requested the court to hear them before taking a decision on Mathew’s bail plea and added they were framed and tortured. Narayanan has also opposed Mathew’s bail plea and the court is expected to take up all pleas together on Monday.
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The two women said they were also entitled to compensation citing ₹1.80 crore paid to Narayanan in 2018 over his framing. They added they do not have the wherewithal to fight the case in India. The two said they suffered physical torture, mental agony, and stigma due to the case.
Mathew has, in his bail plea, claimed IB officials, including its then joint director R B Sreekumar, pressured him to arrest Narayanan. He argued the materials collected during the initial stage of the probe “clearly proved nexus of foreign nationals with the other accused and illegal transaction between them.”
Mathew, who headed a special investigation team in 1994, claimed “a spy network linking Colombo-Chennai-Thiruvananthapuram and Maldives were revealed during his investigation.”
In April, the Supreme Court ordered CBI to investigate the conspiracy behind the framing, calling the matter “serious” and requiring “deeper investigation” into the role of the officers responsible. It accepted the report of a committee constituted by the court in 2018 to probe the circumstances that led to the framing. Narayanan, 79, was arrested in 1994 in the alleged espionage case. He was exonerated two years later following a CBI closure report.
The accused police personnel have been charged with conspiracy, framing of false evidence, and illegal custody.