ISRO SCIENTIST NAMBI NARAYANAN SAGA.

 Sometimes, it is said that truth is stranger than fiction. In the cases and harassment meted out to the ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan certainly strange things have happened. One does not understand why this case was initiated on him in the first place. 

No doubt precedents indicate that he is not completely clean, nevertheless, he was no spy. The subsequent Chairman of ISRO has clearly stated that the documents allegedly passed on to the Maldives spies are not classified, that is they are not much of use. It is surprising as to who initiated this persecution and what the reason behind this was. Who gained by persecuting a top scientist this was is a mystery.

Nambi Naryanan was born at Nagercoil in Tamilnadu in 1941. He studied Mechanical Engineering at an Engineering College in in Madurai. He joined ISRO at TERLS as a technical assistant in the year 1966. He then earned a NASA fellowship and was taken into the Princeton University New Jersey in 1969. He did his master program there in Chemical Rocket Propulsion. Till then India was using solid propellants for rockets and liquid propulsion was unknown.

In 1974, a French company has agreed to transfer the Viking engine technology to India. The transfer was completed by 3 teams. Naryanan led the team of 40 engineers who worked on technology acquisition form the French. The first engine under this program named Vikas was tested by ISRO in 1985 successfully.

ISRO’s internal reports highlighted Narayanan’s excellent organizational and managerial skills. But the reports also noted that he tended to take the credit of his teams work to himself and also instances of him running a personal business. The vigilance cell of ISRO has investigated an allegation of tender manipulation by Narayanan in 1982, but this enquiry was dropped later. In 1994, he submitted his resignation and he was arrested a month later by the Kerala Police.

The arrest was made by Kerala police and IB officials on the basis of a Videographed statement by a colleague that he and Narayanan together had received money for transferring the drawings and documents of rocket drawings to two women from Maldives who were suspected to be spies.

In Dec 1994, the case was transferred to the CBI which was criticized by the media and the opposition in Kerala as some of the people named in the investigation were close to PV Narasimha Rao, the then PM and K.Karunakaran the then CM of Kerala.

Narayanan spent 50 days in jail and claims that the IB officials who investigated wanted him to implicate the Director of the Liquid Propulsion System Centre and when he refused he was tortured until he fell down and was hospitalised. Narayanan has written that the then Director of CBI Sri K.Vijayarama Rao met him in jail after he was jailed for 4 days and claimed that the Director has apologised to him that the case should not have gotten that far. In April 1996, before the General election the CBI submitted the closure report on the case saying there was no spying and the testimonies were obtained by torture.

The closure report was challenged in the Kerala High Court by a police officer S.Vijayan. The issue became political and the Kerala government withdrew the permission given to CBI earlier and asked the Kerala police to take up the case again.

In April 1998, the Supreme Court intervened and asked the Kerala Government to pay each of the accused Rs 1 lac. In 1999 the NHRC asked the Kerala Government to pay Rs 1 crore.

Naryanan retired in 2001.

In 2018, the Supreme Court appointed a panel to probe the alleged torture of Narayanan and awarded Rs 50 lacs for the mental cruelty he suffered all those years.

In 2019 Narayana was granted the Padma Bhushan by the government.

In 2021 the Kerala government settled the case filed against it by paying him Rs 1.30 crores.

In Apr 2021 the SC ordered a CBI probe into the involvement of Police Officers in the controversy. Several of the Police officers filed petitions in different courts of Kerala showing several documents transferring lands between 2004 and 2008 by Narayanan to various CBI officers involved in the investigation.

However, these cases do not make any sense as the closure report on the case was submitted by the CBI in 1996 itself. No reason why he should transfer lands to placate the CBI officials in 2004, 8 years after the closure of the investigation and a clean chit was given to him.