NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday set aside Kerala High Court orders granting anticipatory bail to former police and intelligence bureau officers, including former state police chief Siby Mathews and former ADGP Gujarat R B Sreekumar in a case of the framing of ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan in 1994 espionage case.
A bench led by Justice M R Shah allowed the appeals filed by the CBI and quashed the High Court's orders.
The court, however, remanded all the anticipatory bail applications to the high court for fresh consideration within a period of four weeks.
We request the high court to finally decide and dispose of the anticipatory bail applications at the earliest, but preferably within a period of four weeks from the date of receipt of these orders," the bench said.
The court, however, granted protection from arrest to the accused for a period of five weeks, subject to their cooperation with the investigation, which is an interim arrangement till the high court finally decided the matter.
The top court had in its order on April 15, 2021 directed the CBI to probe into the alleged involvement of some Kerala police officers in framing the former ISRO scientist, Narayanan, who was accused of spying in 1994.
The court had then taken into record the report submitted by the three-member panel, headed by former SC judge Justice D K Jain, which stated that it was a serious issue and required further investigation.
80-year-old Narayanan fought a long battle against the Kerala police officers who accused him of being a Pakistan spy. Besides appointing the panel, the top court had in 2018 directed the Kerala government to pay Rs 50 lakh compensation for causing immense humiliation to Narayanan.
The ISRO spy case surfaced in 1994 when Narayanan was arrested on charges of espionage along with another senior official of ISRO, two Maldivian women and a businessman.
The CBI had held that the then top police officials in Kerala were responsible for Narayanan's illegal arrest. The panel examined the circumstances leading to Narayanan's arrest. It was alleged that confidential documents on India's space programme was allegedly transferred to foreign countries.
Narayanan had maintained that Kerala police fabricated the case and the technology he was accused to have stolen and sold in 1994 case did not even exist at that time.
The Modi government, subsequently, awarded the scientist Padma Bhushan.
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