Gone are the times when a sense of responsibility guided public life and the media in general. The post-Independence zeal for decency and decorum is now, largely, a thing of the past. Selfish agenda often
has the better of public interest. So with what had come to be known as the epic ISRO Spy Case, which created a huge sensation since the mid-1990s. Its central male character, top ISRO scientist Nambi
Narayanan, has finally been given a modicum of relief this past week when the Supreme Court ordered a Rs 50 lakh compensation for the mental agony he was made to suffer for apparently no fault of his.
Famously, the ISRO Spy Case unfolded after the arrest of a Maldivian woman Mariam Rashida on a charge of overstay in the Kerala state capital. The city was also the base of ISRO, India’s top Space exploration establishment. Nambi Narayanan headed a project to develop cryogenic engines technology which India failed to get from world’s top Space technology giants like the US and Russia. In a matter of months, the Kerala police booked Narayanan, his deputy Sasikumar. Insinuations were that the senior scientists fell into a honey trap laid by Rashida, whose visa period had expired. Politics played its major role in the investigations. Politicians, especially the Communists, made a big hue and cry, directly targeting the then Congress
chief minister K Karunakaran, as he was accused of protecting a top police official whose name also figured in the matter of seeking sexual favours from Rashida. All such accusations proved to be baseless in a
CBI probe that followed. Factionalism in the state Congress, led by group leaders K Karunakaran and AK Antony, aggravated the issue. Then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao had allegedly had an axe to grind
against Karunakaran.
In all this, sensationalism reigned supreme. The powerful media – mainly the print media – played a major part in this process. A CIA hand was also alleged in the “trapping” of the scientists in a sex case. Since the case centered around a pretty woman, people lapped up every word of what the media “reported”, much of which proved to be based on journalists’ own fantasies. A Rs 50 lakh compensation, or a fresh probe as the Supreme Court desired, should be little comfort to Nambi Narayanan and other scientists. National interests were
seriously compromised by the media’s hyper-activism and baseless presumptions, a scenario worsened by political leg-pulling. A pity, we live in such times.