THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Some years ago - in 2011, according to one version - S Nambi Narayanan, the former space scientist and a key accused in the ISRO spy scandal, and former DGP Siby Mathews, who investigated the infamous case, met at a friend’s house in Thiruvananthapuram.
It was the first time they had spoken to each other since the former’s arrest in November 1994. One version of that interesting meeting between the duo appears in ‘Ormakalude Bhramanapatham’, Nambi Narayanan’s biography which will be released here on Thursday.
Nambi Narayanan says he was not really interested in meeting Mathews, but had agreed because the friend (Mathews says it was Soorya Krishnamoorthy) insisted. Mathews, who was accompanied by his wife, apparently told him that the then DGP Madhusoodanan had deliberately dumped the case on Mathews’ head. He himself had done nothing to harm Nambi, who was heading the cryogenics project of ISRO when the case broke.
Nambi Narayanan, who writes that Mathews had taken just two-and-a-half minutes to interrogate him in 1994, goes on to say that Mathews’s wife sought his forgiveness. He had replied, "I cannot decide now whether I should forgive. I’m not God to forgive.’’ Though he was fully acquitted by the Supreme Court in 1998 itself, Nambi Narayanan has been waging ferocious court battles seeking action against Mathews.
Mathews, however, has a different story to relate. He admits that the meeting did take place, some time in 2011, but he had not taken the initiative for it. Rather, the friend mentioned in Nambi’s biography had. "I had gone there to clarify certain points. I wanted to make it clear to him that I was not the person who had leaked the stories to the newspapers back then. What use would it do to seek his forgiveness when the cases are in court?’’ he says.
According to him, his wife had not spoken a single word to Nambi Narayanan. Nambi Narayanan ends his biography on the note the IB and the police could not have imagined he would be acquitted one day. But truth has to come out one day, he writes.