Lekha G –
A Thiruvananthapuram District Court has granted interim bail to retired DGP Siby Mathews, one of the accused in the CBI case probing conspiracy behind the ISRO spy case, 1994.
Mathews moved the Court after CBI had registered an FIR against him among 18 other accused before a Chief Judicial Magistrate Court in Thiruvananthapuram on charges of framing ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan in the spy case.
On April 15, the Supreme Court had ordered the transfer of the case to CBI directing to carry on the investigation treating the findings of a panel headed by Justice (retd) D K Jain as part of preliminary investigation and submit a report within three months.
The CBI, in its probe, gave a clean chit to Nambi Narayanan accusing the Kerala police of “Fabricating” the case and said the accusation of the technology stolen by him did not even exist at that time.
CBI alleged that Mathews had left “The entire investigation to IB surrendering his duties” and ordered arrest in absence of adequate evidence.
Mathew, then a DIG, while leading the probe initiated by Kerala police had arrested former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan in the 1994 spy case pertaining to allegations of transferring confidential documents to foreign countries on India’s space programme.
Narayanan, the then director of the cryogenic project at ISRO, was arrested along with the then ISRO Deputy Director D Sashikumaran and Fousiya Hasan.