Pawns, not spies

The Supreme Court has, hopefully, brought the curtain down on the ISRO spy case that rocked the nation a few years ago. The irony is that th...

The Supreme Court has, hopefully, brought the curtain down on the ISRO spy case that rocked the nation a few years ago. The irony is that the case would have been closed a long time ago but for the Kerala government, which refused to recognise the truth. That it had an axe to grind in the case was obvious right from the beginning. Otherwise, it would have humbly accepted the findings of the CBI, which had inquired into the matter at the government8217;s own insistence and found that there was not an iota of truth in the charges against the ISRO scientists and the two Maldivian women.

Instead, the government construed the CBI8217;s report as a body blow to its prestige and ordered the state police to re-investigate the case. This constituted an about-turn because the state government had initially taken the stand that given the ramifications of the case and the logistical problems involved, its police were not competent to do an honest job. Thus the mala fide intention of the government was quite apparent, a pointunderscored by the apex court8217;s judgment on Tuesday. In a rare instance of its kind, the court has also asked the state government to give a compensation of Rs 1 lakh to each of the six persons who have been fully exonerated of the charge of spying.

By awarding compensation to the victims, the court obviously wants the state to atone for its lapses. But will the amount really compensate for the mental and physical torture that they had suffered all these years? Their condition can be gauged from the report that one of them is now a mental wreck, who suffers from frequent bouts of depression and paranoia. If the spy case was a cock-and-bull story as there are reasons to believe it was, why should those who perpetrated the unthinkable on these innocent people be allowed to go scot-free? It is unlikely that the rulers who dragged them into the case were really after their lives. From the sequence of events, it is quite clear that the spy case was a convenient ploy to frame some politicians. It is for thisvery reason that the E.K. Nayanar government wanted fresh investigations so that its political detractors could be harassed further. The manner in which it sought to trap a Congress leader in the Suryanelli rape case a couple of years ago showed that the government does not spare any method to drive its opponents to the wall. It is indeed regrettable that the Marxists used the ISRO scientists as pawns on their political chessboard, unmindful of the damage it caused to a premier scientific organisation.

While justice has finally been done in the spy case, it is also time to take another look at how society as a whole reacted to the alleged espionage. Social ostracism of the family members of the accused 8212; it had reached a point where their houses were pelted with stones 8212; merely on the basis of unsubstantiated charges, did not show the local community in a good light. Even sections of the media, which went to the extent of sensationalising the case by ferreting out details of the sex lives of the Maldivianwomen, displayed a greater concern for circulation figures than for arriving at the truth. The apex court8217;s judgment is a warning against governments misusing their investigating agencies for political purposes.