The recently reopened famed ISRO spy case probe appears to have gone into a fast track mode as the Delhi unit of the CBI travels into Sri Lanka and Maldives to take statements from the two women, who were among the then arrested in the espionage case.
The ISRO spy case surfaced in 1994 when S.Nambi Narayanan, then a top scientist at the ISRO unit here was arrested on charges of espionage along with another senior ISRO official, two Maldivian women (Fousia Hassan and Mariam Rasheeda) and a businessman.
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Hassan is presently settled in Colombo, while Rasheeda is in Maldives.
Hassan told the media that a team of CBI officials had informed her that first they will meet Rasheeda and then come to take a statement from her.
"But following lockdown norms in Colombo, their visit which was planned for last month did not take place and they cancelled the Maldives trip also," said Hassan.
According to sources in the know of things, the team of Delhi CBI officials is shortly expected to meet the two women. Since Fousia's health is bad, she expressed her inability to travel to India and hence the CBI decided to meet her at her place, said sources.
It was last month that the CBI registered an FIR at the Thiruvananthapuram Chief Judicial Magistrate's Court against 18 people, all of whom had probed the case and included top former Kerala Police and IB officials, who have been charged with conspiracy and fabrication of documents.
Things changed for Narayanan when the Supreme Court in 2020 appointed a three-member committee headed by retired judge Justice D.K. Jain to probe if there was a conspiracy among the then police officials to falsely implicate Narayanan.
The new CBI team arrived in August and to work on the orders of the apex court.
The CBI freed Narayanan in 1995 and since then he has been fighting a legal battle against Mathews, S.Vijayan and Joshua who probed the case and falsely implicated him.
Narayanan has now received a compensation of Rs 1.9 crore from various agencies, including the Kerala government which in 2020 paid him Rs 1.3 crore and later awarded Rs 50 lakh as directed by the Supreme Court in 2018 and another Rs 10 lakh ordered by the National Human Rights Commission.
The compensation was because the former ISRO scientist had to suffer wrongful imprisonment, malicious prosecution and humiliation.