Light at the end of a very dark tunnel - Lessons from the curious case of Mr. Nambi Narayanan
One may or may not believe in the existence of heaven or hell. But often people go through its experience on earth itself. No one can imagine the hellish agony Mr. Nambi Narayanan went through when he was falsely implicated in an espionage case involving ISRO where he was working as a senior scientist in charge of Cryogenics Division.
Mr. Nambi Narayan (born 1941) is from Nagercoil of Tamilnadu and had his education from Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai and Princeton University USA, both reputed institutions of impeccable credentials. As an Aerospace engineer he had a brilliant career in Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
On November 30, 1994, Mr. Narayanan was picked up from his home at Trivandrum and produced before the Magistrate's court by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Kerala police on the charge of trading India's space secrets to foreign agents for money and other enticements. Subsequently the media was full of stories about how a tall, athletic woman from the Maldives, Mariam Rasheeda, working for ISI of Pakistan, had enticed top scientists of ISRO, including Mr. Narayanan into selling to her secret rocket technology. Mr. Narayanan was remanded to judicial custody.
Mr. Narayanan recalls that on the morning of November 30, the crowd outside the court was restive and angry. They booed and jeered at him. Mr. Narayanan alleges that the police was unforgivingly harsh to him. He was subjected to "psych-pathological" torture in custody. They sometimes made him stand for hours at a stretch, deprived him of sleep and refused him water. They allegedly threatened to implicate his family and colleagues in the case unless he confessed to the crime. The Scientist spent 50 days as an undertrial in a prison cell The case was eventually taken over by the CBI. However in 1996 it closed the case citing lack of evidence. The mysterious Rasheeda was never traced. The closure report of CBI highlighted the police lapses and questioned the dubious method employed by the local investigators to validate what it called trumped-up charges against Mr. Narayanan.
Mr. Narayanan later told journalists that only a "half-wit" could have concocted the case. "How can I sell a cryogenic technology that was non-existent in India in 1994? why on earth would any entity want to cultivate me as a spy to sell them a technology which was available in the open market and as common as brinjal?"
After the closure of the case in CBI court in 1996, the state government had tried to reopen the case by ordering a fresh police enquiry against Mr. Narayanan and others, but the Supreme Cort halted the move.
Mr. Narayanan knocked at the doors of the state government to hold the errant police officers accountable, but to no avail. He filed a case in the Supreme Court and on September 14 this year, a three judge bench headed by the Chief Justice of India Hon'ble Dipak Mishra held that Mr. Narayan was the victim of a criminal frame-up based on some kind of fancy or notion. The verdict said that the Kerala Police had trumped up allegations of espionage against the scientist. Besides awarding a compensation of fifty lakh rupees to Mr. Narayanan by the state government, the Supreme Court has decided to hold the errant officers accountable and has formed a committee headed by former Supreme Court judge Shri D.K. Jain to find ways and means of prosecuting them. The Jain Committee is also likely to look into the possible conspiracy behind the episode that finished the career of a bright scientist, crashed several reputations and ruined innocent lives.
To restore his honour and bring his accusers to accountability, Mr. Narayanan has suffered a huge cost in terms of money, time and mental agony. The Supreme Court has restored his honour but who will give him back his promising career, and his unfulfilled dream of being a part of the dream of India achieving spectacular success in Space Technology?
There are two lessons to be learnt from the Supreme Court judgment on the unfortunate saga of Mr. Nambi Narayanan. One, accountability, when the Court holds that the case is trumped up. While the Police should be supported, encouraged and applauded for successful investigation of genuine criminality, trumped up charges can lead to unmitigated disaster.
Second, the possibility of a conspiracy within the institution of ISRO to ruin the career of a brilliant scientist needs to be carefully investigated. Such institutions are temples of research and there is no place in them for internal conflicts and self-annihilating conspiracies. The case has attained a finality after the Apex Court has delivered its verdict, but paths must be opened up for our institutions to work with internal cohesion and integrity to bring laurels to the country in the field of science and technology.
Hopefully the Jain Committee will issue some useful guidelines on these two issues.
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