Kollam: The 1994 ISRO espionage case that put the Kerala Police to shame had its genesis in the inability of senior police officer Rishiraj Singh to rent a decent house in Thiruvananthapuram, said former police chief T P Senkumar.
Singh, then a deputy commissioner in the city, was surprised that most of the good houses had been rented by people from the Maldives. He told special branch sub-inspector S Vijayan to look into the pattern which he found strange enough to investigate.
Vijayan’s probe took him to the house of Mariam Rasheeda, a Maldivian woman, and found that her travel documents were not in order. That paved the way for a case (No. 215/94) in the Vanchiyoor police station.
The case hit national headlines when ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan was arrested on November 30 on charges of espionage. He was accused of passing on technology-related information to Rasheeda and another Maldivian woman.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which took over the case, dismissed the charges against him in 1996. The Supreme Court later exonerated him of all charges.
Senkumar, who was asked to reinvestigate the case in 1996, said that he was planning to write a book on the case that was not. He was speaking at a function organised by the Kollam Press Club in memory of P K Thambi.
The former director general of police said that the case had nothing to do with the U.S. spy agency or cryogenic engines. He also claimed that he was told by ISRO former chairman Madhavan Nair that India possessed no knowhow of cryogenic technology in 1994. Nobody in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had any knowledge about the cutting-edge technology then.
On June 24, 1996, the then chief minister E K Nayanar told Senkumar that the government was about to cancel the permission for the CBI to investigate the case and asked him to take up the responsibility. When Senkumar said that the state police could not take up a case after handing over the task to the CBI, Nayanar said that he would take care of it, Senkumar said.
He said it was the only instance anywhere in India where the state police reinvestigated a case that was handed over to the CBI. He claimed that the unusual assignment cost him dearly as he was slapped with three cases.
He said that nobody really dug up to the origins of the case despite new revelations and a complete volte-face by the media.