Who is Nambi Narayanan Quora?

Nambi Narayanan, who was born on 12 December 1941, is an Indian scientist, aeronautical engineer, and recipient of the Padma Bhushan award. He was in charge of the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) cryogenics branch as a senior executive. He was wrongly accused of spying and arrested in 1994.

In 1994, Narayanan was accused of disclosing crucial defense secrets to purported Maldivian intelligence officials Mariam Rasheeda and Fauzia Hassan. Officials from the Department of Defense stated that the secrets were “flight test data” from rocket and satellite launch experiments that were highly classified. Narayanan was one of two scientists (the other was D. Sasikumaran) accused of selling secrets for millions of dollars. However, his residence exhibited no indications of the ill-gotten money he was suspected of obtaining.

 

Narayanan was arrested and served a 48-day jail sentence. He claims that the personnel from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) who interrogated him wanted him to make false accusations against ISRO’s leadership. He claims that two IB officials asked him to implicate A. E. Muthunayagam, the former director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre and his former supervisor (LPSC).
He was tormented until he collapsed and was hospitalized after refusing to comply. His primary concern against ISRO is that he was not supported, he claims.
At the time, ISRO chairman Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan declared that ISRO could not intervene in a legal situation.

 

The CBI rejected the accusations as bogus in May 1996. In April 1998, the Supreme Court dismissed their claims as well. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued reprimands against the government of Kerala in September 1999 for damaging Narayanan’s illustrious career in space research and subjecting him and his family to physical and mental abuse.
The two scientists, Sasikumar and Narayanan, were relocated out of Thiruvananthapuram and given desk positions following the dismissal of all accusations against them.

In 2001, the NHRC ordered the government of Kerala to pay him 1 crore rupees (1,000,000) in compensation.

 

In 2001 he retired. In September 2012, based on an appeal by NHRC India, the Kerala High Court ordered Nambi Narayanan to be compensated with Rs 10 lakhs.

The Hindu reported on 3 October 2012 that the Kerala government had withdrawn charges against the police personnel who allegedly wrongly accused Narayanan in the espionage case, on the grounds that more than 15 years had passed since the probe was began. Siby Mathews, the official in charge of the case, was eventually named Chief Information Commissioner in Kerala (2011 – 2016).

On November 8, 2012, it was reported that the Kerala government has disobeyed the Kerala High Court’s decision to pay Rs 10 lakhs in compensation.