Siby Mathews files appeal against HC order in ISRO case

Kochi: Siby Mathews IPS Wednesday filed an appeal against the recent High Court order nullifying the State government decision not to take action against the police officers who investigated the ISRO spy case.

Significantly, Siby Mathews filed the appeal a day after the government announced its decision not to go in appeal against the state high court judgement quashing its order to drop charges against three police officers, who had implicated and arrested scientist S. Nambi Narayanan in the ISRO espionage case.

On Tuesday, Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala told reporters the state government has decided not to go in appeal against the High Court order in the case.

The three police officials are then top police officer Siby Mathews, K.K. Joshua and S. Vijayan, who are all retired now.

Mathews, presently the state chief information commissioner, recently had said that he was being made a scapegoat in the case.

It was in 2011 that the Oommen Chandy government decided not to take action against three police officers and it was against this that Narayanan approached the court.

The ISRO spy case surfaced in 1994 when Narayanan, along with another top official of the space agency, two Maldivian women and a businessman was arrested on espionage charges, but the Central Bureau of Investigation cleared him in 1995 and since then he has been fighting a legal battle against the three police officials.