The CBI has maintained that the ISRO espionage case of 1994 was a concocted one and it could have been the outcome of a conspiracy to delay India's cryogenic technology development.
The CBI filed a statement at the Kerala High Court on Wednesday opposing the bail pleas of the former police officials arraigned by it in the case registered recently to probe into the conspiracy angle behind the ISRO espionage case as per the directive of the Supreme Court.
The CBI said that the false implication of ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan in the concocted case initiated by the Kerala police and the Intelligence Bureau impacted development of the country's cryogenic technology. The CBI further stated that Narayanan was arrested without any evidence.
The CBI strongly opposed the anticipatory bail pleas of the former police officials stating that the offence against them were of serious nature and since they were former senior officials the chances of tampering with evidence was high. The case is also of national interest.
While former Kerala police officials S Vijayan and Tampi S Durgadutt approached the High Court seeking anticipatory bail, former DGP Siby Mathews who headed the investigation team that probed the case had moved Thiruvananthpuram principal session's court seeking anticipatory bail. A total of 18 former police and IB officials, including former Gujarat DGP R B Sreekumar, were arraigned by the CBI in the conspiracy case.
The major contentions of the Kerala police officials was that they acted as per the instructions of the IB and Narayanan had planned to take voluntary retirement from service from ISRO before his arrest.
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