The infamous ISRO spy case has once again disrupted the peace in Kerala’s Congress party and caused discomfort for the UDF Government it leads with fresh demands coming up from within the party for action against the three former police officials who had seriously erred in the investigation of the fabricated case.
Two days after the Kerala High Court quashing the present Government’s June, 2011 decision not to act against the police officials, State Congress general secretary Padmaja Venugopal, daughter of late K Karunakaran who was a victim of the false case, said that the former police officials should be questioned as they were acting as pawns in the hands of some other people.
“These officers should be questioned for the truth to come out,” Padmaja said on Wednesday while responding to Monday’s High Court order. Her brother and Congress MlA K Muraleedharan had two years ago written a letter to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy seeking action against the three police officials.
“It is a pity that no action has been taken on the letter of Muraleedharan even after two years,” Padmaja said. The ISRO spy case had led to the resignation of Karunakaran as Chief Minister in March, 1995. It is said that the entire case was the result of a conspiracy in which, according to Muraleedharan, even former PM Narasimha Rao could have played a role.
Within hours of Padmaja raising her demand, Muraleedharan, former State Congress president, also called for immediate Government action to bring out the truth of the “fabricated case”. “There should be action against the officials. I expect that this time there will be action against them especially as there is this High Court directive,” he said in Thiruvananthapuram.
The fresh demands are sure to cause a lot of discomfort for Chief Minister Chandy. It was alleged even in 1994-95 that the spy case was fabricated by Karunakaran’s detractors including Chandy to finish him off politically. After Karunakaran resigned, his rival AK Antony, whose loyalist Chandy was then, took over as chief minister. Karunakaran died on December 23, 2010.
The Congress’s ‘I’ group, which had started a re-consolidation move last week, is planning to use the issue as a weapon against its rival, Chandy. It is of the position that the Government should not try to protect the police officials any more or go for appeal against Monday’sHigh Court order directing the Government to review its 2011 decision.
“It will be very difficult for the Chief Minister to do anything to protect the police officials now. If he acts against the spirit of the High Court order, it will be equivalent to admitting that he has something to hide in the spy case,” said an ‘I’ group leader. It is not yet clear what position Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala, head of the ‘I’ group, will adopt on the issue.
The ISRO spy case which wrecked the lives and careers of two rocket scientists including Nambi Narayanan, who was working on India’s cryogenic engine development project 20 years ago, and eroded to a great extent the morale of the ISRO had started on October 20, 1994 with the arrest of Maldivian woman Mariam Rasheeda by the Kerala Police.
Though Mariam Rasheeda was originally arrested for overstaying in India after the expiry of visa, the case took strange turns within a short time to become an espionage scandal in which she and another Maldivian woman, Fousia Hassan, were branded as spies and the scientists were accused of leaking out blue prints of ISRO programmes.
The CBI, which had in 1996 concluded after investigations that the ISRO spy case was false and unproven, had recommended appropriate Government action against the three officials - Sibi Mathews, then DIG (Crime), S Vijayan, then Circle Inspector (Special Branch), and KK Joshua, then SP (CB-CID) - who had allegedly fabricated the case and investigated it first.