Kerala: CBI files chargesheet against former policemen in ISRO conspiracy case

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The CBI team probing the conspiracy behind the ISRO spy case has named high-ranking former police officers in the chargesheet filed at the Thiruvananthapuram Chief Judicial Magistrate Court. The chargesheet was filed on Monday by an officer from the CBI Delhi unit, which had probed the case.

Sources said former DGP Sibi Mathews, former IB Deputy Director R B Sreekumar, former Pettah Inspector S Vijayan and former Pettah Sub-inspector Thambi S Durgadath have been named as accused in the chargesheet.

In its FIR, which stated that the accused conspired to foist a fabricated case on former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan, the CBI had named 18 people as accused.

The Supreme Court had ordered a CBI probe on the basis of the Justice D K Jain report, which suggested that the spy case was the result of a conspiracy.

The spy case erupted in 1994 when Narayanan was arrested on charges of espionage along with another senior ISRO official, two Maldivian women, and a businessman. The CBI acquitted him in 1995, and since then, he has been fighting a legal battle against the then top police officials, including Siby Mathews, Vijayan and K K Joshua, who probed the case and implicated Narayanan.

The case had created a political storm in Kerala at a time when the group war in the Congress was at its peak.

Later, the then Chief Minister K Karunakaran had to quit office in 1995 following reports that he was protecting his close aide and senior police officer Raman Srivastava, who later became the state police chief and police advisor to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.