Why do Supreme court ordered Kerala Government to pay compensation to former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan?

Good to see you back ma'am! Delighted to write to you.

This is a former space scientist Nambi Narayanan, a renowned and reputed name in the field when active.

Back in 1994, he, along with few others, was charged with selling confidential data, pertaining to satellite launches, to defense officers of Maldives. In this case of spying, he was arrested by the Kerala Police for 50 days. During this span, he was tortured by the police and IB to accept all the allegations against him on record. He was also pushed to level allegations against the top names in ISRO of that time. Denying doing anything such, he was further tortured.

2 years following his arrest, CBI dismissed all the charges leveled against Narayanan, calling it all a fabrication.

2 years later, in April 1998, the Supreme Court acquitted him of all the charges.

Following this whole fiasco, the distinguished reputation and contribution of the scientist were greatly hurt. To that, he was also tortured and pressurized throughout the course, since the charges were leveled until he was let go clean by the Supreme Court.

In 2001, the National Human Rights Commission, for these losses and difficulties, demanded the state government in Kerala to compensate Nambi Narayanan with Rs 1 crore. The order was contested for a decade and the state government argued that it will pay him only Rs 10 lakhs, although it never did. From Kerala High Court, the case was taken to the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court, now, has finally delivered the verdict, asking the state government to pay Rs 50 lakhs to Nambi Narayanan as compensation for all the struggles and character assassination he went through.

“There can be no scintilla of doubt that the appellant, a successful scientist having the national reputation, has been compelled to undergo immense humiliation. The lackadaisical attitude of the state police to arrest anyone and put him in police custody has made the appellant suffer the ignominy,” the Supreme Court bench said in its judgment.

In the same period, Scientist Nambi Narayanan filed a petition and leveled charges against 3 top officials of that time for fabricating a story against him and dementing him. Sadly, in 2012, the State Government dropped all the charges against these 3 police officials on the ground that it has been 15 years since all happened and nothing conclusive decision has been made till now.

This is a sad story of a recognized scientist who was aggressed, harassed and framed in lies by the state. He waited for almost 25 years. After failing on the many fronts to clean his sleeves off, the justice has finally been done to him. And the top court has again proved, albeit with many delays, that if you’re honest, justice will always be delivered even if the entire system is against you. Hopefully, so many other people who have been framed in such phony cases by the state get the same justice as the former Scientist Nambi Narayanan.