BENGALURU: Sudhir Kumar Sharma, the 'labour contractor from Bengaluru' who was falsely accused in the ISRO spy case of 1994, tortured and harassed by the Kerala police before his acquittal in 1998, died of cancer in the city on Thursday. He is survived by his wife and three daughters.
He was suffering from cancer and was battling to get compensation of Rs. 55 lakh for the trauma he was forced to endure. However, the case had seen little progress till date and recently, the Supreme Court's ruling of Rs 50 lakh compensation to former ISRO scientist N Nambi Narayanan had meant a ray of hope for Sharma as well.
Ostracized and labelled as a traitor even while he fought to clear his name, it has been a long and uphill battle for Sharma, 62, who kept fighting as he wanted his reputation to be restored. While another co-accused, D Chandrashekar, did not survive till the recent judgement, Sharma got to see the apex court hand out justice for Narayanan and he was hopeful that it would follow for him too as the Supreme Court had labelled the entire case a 'criminal frame-up'.
In a recent interview to TNIE, Sharma, who was suffering from stage-4 oesophagus cancer which had spread to his lungs, said that his days were numbered and that he wanted his friends and family members, who had cut ties with him and labelled him as a traitor to the country, to realize that he was innocent of all charges.
Sharma's nightmare started when he was just 34-year-old and was detained in November 1994. He had offered to help a Maldivian national that his friend Chandrashekar had met at the airport who had been duped on the pretext of admission of her child to a school. Sharma only extended his help as he knew the school authorities. This was enough for the police to zero in on him and get him arrested. His ordeal included torture, physical and mental, at their hands. He was undergoing palliative care since the last three years and had filed the case for damages to ensure financial security for his family who supported him through the years of battling cancer.