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The Rediff Special/ Venu Menon

'We would not have proceeded with the ISRO case if the high court had prevented us'

The Supreme Court ruling clearing the six accused in the ISRO spy case caught the Left Democratic Front government in Kerala, led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, on the wrong foot. The government faced strictures for its June 1996 order withdrawing consent to the Central Bureau of Investigation, which had dismissed the espionage charge as false, and directing the state police to reinvestigate the case. The court called the government's action a malafide exercise of power.

Stung, Chief Minister E K Nayanar sought to pass the buck to the Kerala high court. "We would not have proceeded with the case if the high court had prevented us," he told newsmen. Clearly, the Nayanar government had ignored the note of caution contained in the November 27, 1996 judgment which read: "The state in exercise of its power under the Police Act can direct a police officer to do further investigation. But that power, in our opinion, is circumscribed by the provisions of the Indian Official Secrets Act."

The espionage charge levelled against Maldivian nationals Mariam Rasheeda and Fawzia Hassan, ISRO scientists D Sasikumaran and S Nambi Narayanan, and Bangalore-based businessmen K Chandrasekhar and S K Sharma, had made the case off-limits to the state government and its police. The ICS Act is the exclusive domain of the Union government and only a central agency such as the CBI is empowered to probe an offence made out under it.

No one disputes that the Kerala police acted appropriately when it sought the intervention of the CBI in a case that appeared to have international dimensions. A diary recovered from Mariam Rasheeda had pointed to her nexus with Bangalore-based foreign nationals engaged in subversive operations. Telephone printouts established the unlikely connection between Rasheeda and Sasikumaran. What was the common ground between a Maldivian woman tourist and an ISRO scientist?

This was the question that intrigued the Intelligence Bureau. IB sleuths from Delhi swooped down on Thiruvananthapuram in October 1994 and set about extraditing information from the six suspects who were by then in police custody. By December, the CBI came into the picture. State police officials contend that the IB pursued the espionage angle vigorously but later backtracked on its findings. IB officials video taped the interrogations, one of which showed Fawzia Hassan admitting she received a cover from Sasikumaran. Later, the IB disclaimed knowledge of the tapes.

The Kerala police attributes this about-turn to a conflict of interest within the IB. The agency is divided down the middle between two divergent interpretations of the ISRO case. One lobby sees the scientists as part of a sex-and-spy ring involved in purveying sensitive missile technology to unfriendly countries. As if in corroboration, a CPI-M leader from Kerala publicly remarked that the know-how for Pakistan's Ghauri emanated from ISRO.

The rival section advocates the line that the ISRO scientists were victims of a well-planned international conspiracy spearheaded by Western powers intent on scuttling India's progress in developing low-cost satellite technology. The conspiracy theory gained impetus under former IB director Arun Bhagat, according to state police sources. Bhagat, who served previously as special director with the CBI, did not mind the IB toeing the CBI line. Pathak, his predecessor, had gone to the extent of implicating then prime minister Narasimha Rao's son in the case.

The Supreme Court endorsement of the CBI findings has come as a body blow to the state police. "It's one thing to say that our investigation was faulty, but quite another to say that we cooked up the case," a senior officer fumed. The police are convinced that Rasheeda fits the definition of a foreign agent.

"She was collecting information on her countrymen about a plot to overthrow her government. This establishes her as a foreign agent and any contact with a foreign agent constitutes espionage," an officer points out.

"Wrong," counters Sasikumaran, "She must indulge in activity that harms the national interest of India to be called a spy."

The SC verdict has closed the case but not doused the debate. Meanwhile, Rasheeda awaits court permission (she faces a couple of private cases) to return home to Male after three-and-a-half years behind bars.

THE ISRO LINKS:
What happens to the four years of life they have been robbed of?
Mariam Rasheeda can go home, finally!
The untold spy story
For Maldivian Rasheeda, the ISRO espionage case nightmare is finally over
Sinned or sinned against? The tangled tale of Mariam Rasheeda
"If I step out I may be killed"

The Rediff Special

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