Colombo: Fouziyya Hassan, one of the two Maldivian women arrested and detained along with scientist Nambi Narayanan over the 1994 ISRO spy case, died on Wednesday. She was 80. 

She died in Sri Lanka where she was undergoing treatment.

An actor, who had performed many prominent roles in films and TV dramas in her native Male, Fouziyya became a household name in Kerala after her arrest on espionage charges in 1994. Kerala police arrested her, along with her friend Maria Rasheeda, on 11 November 1994. 

Investigators accused that they were spies who were paid to pass on defence information to Pakistan and claimed that they were funded by a Maldivian banker. Police claimed they named Nambi Narayanan, then an ISRO scientist, as involved in the case. They spent over three years in jail. 

But in an exclusive interview with Manorama in 2017, Fouziyya said she didn’t know Nambi Narayanan until she was arrested in the case.  

The Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Kerala police had forced her to name Nambi, she alleged. 

Fouziyya said she first saw Nambi Narayanan in the CBI custody and had never met Raman Srivastava, the former Kerala police chief who was also under the scanner of investigators.

She had to accept several things that the investigators alleged after they brought her then 14-year-old daughter before her and threatened to rape her, she told Manorama.

After they were freed and acquitted of all charges, the CBI registered a case against the officers and 14 others for various offences such as criminal conspiracy, kidnapping, and fabrication of evidence under the IPC.

For being falsely implicated in the espionage case, the Kerala Government paid Rs 1.30 crore to Nambi Narayanan in 2020. 

The compensation was given for settling the case filed by the former ISRO scientist against the government in a sub-court in Thiruvananthapuram seeking enhanced damages for his illegal arrest and harassment.