The CBI on Friday successfully got an adjournment before the Supreme Court in its appeal against the anticipatory bail granted to former intelligence and police officials accused in the ISRO frame-up case.
A Bench led by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar postponed the hearing to March 25. “I need some more time,” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, for the Central probe agency, said.
The CBI had made a preliminary submission about a “larger conspiracy involving foreign powers” afoot in the case. The frame-up had stalled the technology to develop the cryogenic engine by decades, the agency had argued in an earlier hearing of the case. The CBI has challenged the bail granted at the “threshold” of the investigation.
HC grants relief
The Kerala High Court had granted anticipatory bail to P.S. Jayaprakash, Thampi S. Durga Dutt, Vijayan and R.B. Sreekumar. It had held that the accused “should not be made to face a similar situation of being forced to undergo the ignominy of being incarcerated in the prison for interrogation at this old age after their retirement for an incident that took place a quarter of the century ago.”
The High Court had also noted there was no “indication or material, apart from the rhetoric that a foreign power has a hand in persuading the petitioners,” to implicate the ISRO scientists like Nambi Narayanan in the case.
