Thiruvananthapuram: Former DGP Sibi Mathews, who is registered as an accused by the CBI investigating team in the conspiracy behind the 1994 ISRO espionage case, has been given interim anticipatory bail till Tuesday by the District Court.
Mathews sought anticipatory bail after reports emerged that the central agency would fast-track actions against former state police and Intelligence Bureau officials who were charged by the CBI. Meanwhile, the court sought the CBI’s opinion on Mathews’ anticipatory bail plea.
The CBI had mentioned 18 former officers in its FIR registered before the CJM Court here. The CBI had started the probe on the instruction of the Supreme Court. The court analyzed the Justice D K Jain report to conclude that the case ought to be investigated by the premier agency to discover if there was any conspiracy to frame former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan and others.
In the FIR registered by the Delhi unit, former state Special Branch inspector S Vijayan and the then Pettah station sub-inspector Thampi S Durgadutt have been listed as the first and second accused, respectively. Then city police commissioner V R Rajeevan, former DGP Sibi Mathews, former IB deputy director R B Sreekumar and former DySP K K Joshua are the other prominent names highlighted in the list of accused.
Sibi had then headed the special team to probe the sensational case that started with the arrest of two Maldivian women, who were arrested for indulging in honey-trapping to leak sensitive information regarding India’s space projects to foreign agencies.
The FIR listed 10 charges against the accused, including Indian Penal Code sections concerning criminal conspiracy, fabrication of proof, kidnapping, torture, etc. The case surfaced in 1994 when Narayanan was imprisoned on charges of espionage along with another senior official of ISRO, two Maldivian women, and a businessman.
The case created a political storm at a time when the tumult in the Congress party was at its worst. Later, in 1995, then chief minister K Karunakaran had to resign after it was found that he had been protecting his close friend and senior police officer Raman Srivastava, who was then an inspector-general. Srivastava then went on to become state police chief and police advisor to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
The CBI in 1996 found that charges against Narayanan were false and therefore dropped the case.
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