Kerala not to go for appeal in ISRO spy case

The Kerala government Tuesday said it has decided 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.

"The state government has decided not to go in appeal," Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala told reporters here.

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, last month had made it clear that he has decided to go for an appeal against the high court verdict that came in October. Chennithala had then said the state government will seek legal advice before they make a decision.

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.