It was a much-awaited verdict from the highest seat of justice in the country and everybody now knows about it, but not K. Chandrasekhar, one of the three incarcerated by the Kerala Police and sleuths of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in the name of the ISRO espionage case.
He died at 8.40 p.m. on Sunday at a Bengaluru hospital without getting to know about the Supreme Court verdict of Friday.
Mr. Chandrasekhar had gone into a coma barely an hour before the Supreme Court declared that the former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan was the victim of trumped-up allegations of espionage.
“He was a shattered man all these years. He had been ailing for sometime, but he was fine till he went into a coma on the morning the judgment of the Supreme Court came. His condition is really bad,” his wife K.S. Vijayamma had told The Hindu over phone from Bengaluru barely a few minutes before Mr. Chandrasekhar breathed his last.
Condition turned worse
The conversation had got disrupted when she found her husband’s condition taking a turn for the worse.
A few minutes later, she returned the call to this correspondent to announce his death. “Mr. Chandrasekhar is no more. He passed away at 8.40 p.m.,” she said. Earlier, she spoke to The Hindu about the brutal torture that he was subjected to by the Kerala Police and IB sleuths, how he began to lead the life of a recluse, and how she, a general manager with the Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) at Bengaluru, had to support him all by herself.
The couple do not have any children. She said Mr. Chandrasekhar, who had been working with Glavkosmos since 1992, when he was charged for espionage. Later, she too was interrogated by the CBI. “We suffered to such an extent. We didn’t have any income other than what I earned. Now I have my family support,” she said.
Ms. Vijayamma said Mr. Chandrasekhar had cut off all his links with the world following the intense media coverage of the case.
“The whole world knew our names... We decided never to step back into Kerala after that. See, our house was damaged in stone throwing... He had gone through a massive trauma. Who will understand this,” she asked.
