Ex-ISRO scientist remembers threats from RB Sreekumar

Mumbai: After the Supreme Court indicted former Gujarat Director General (DG) of Police RB Sreekumar and social activist Teesta Setalvad of sensationalizing and politicizing an issue replete with falsehoods, former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan tweeted that among these Sreekumar did exactly the same to him years ago. 

The Gujarat police on Saturday arrested Setalvad from her Mumbai residence and Sreekumar from Ahmedabad while citing the Supreme Court ruling in the Gulbarg Society massacre case. The apex court on Friday had dismissed the plea by Zakia Jafri, wife of slain former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, to overturn the findings of a special investigation team (SIT) that gave Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then-chief minister of Gujarat, a clean chit. “I came to know that he was arrested today (Saturday) for fabricating stories and trying to sensationalize them. It is exactly what he did in my case,” Narayanan told a news outlet.

Notably, Narayanan had been arrested for espionage in 1994. The charges against him were found to be false and were dismissed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 1996. The Supreme Court declared him not guilty in 1998. “Our system is such that anybody can make any loose statement and get away with that. I’m very happy to note that he has been arrested because he is crossing all limits in terms of decency,” the retired aerospace engineer added. Narayanan recalled that Sreekumar was commandant at the VSSC and asked him to appoint his niece or nephew to a post at Thumba. However, since the recruitment process was fair, both candidates got rejected.

“Then, a furious Sreekumar came to my office. I asked him to leave and threatened to call the police. He said I would regret that day later,” Narayan recalls. People familar with the issues said the BJP will also be demanding action against Sreekumar for his role in Narayanan’s case. “For persons not privy to the meeting where utterances were allegedly made by Narendra Modi, (they) falsely claimed themselves to be eyewitnesses, after thorough investigations by SIT, it is clear that it is false,” Friday’s Supreme Court ruling had pointed out.