Chief Minister Oommen Chandy closed the case against the police officers involved in the ISRO spy case fearing that the conspiracy hatched to oust the then Chief Minister K Karunakaran, in which he had a hand, might come out, KTDC former chairman Cherian Philip alleged on Wednesday.
Addressing a symposium on the controversial espionage case organised by the Nationalist Lawyers’ Congress here, Cherian Philip said that he too was part of the ‘smaller conspiracy’ involving Chandy and others, intended to force Karunakaran to step down. “But the bigger conspiracy, to checkmate India’s space programme, was still shrouded in mystery and a detailed investigation was called for,” he said.
“The depth of that conspiracy is still steeped in mystery. There is an international conspiracy behind it. The then Congress leadership was surely responsible. Whether the RAW or IB or then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao himself is the question,” Cherian Philip said. “When he lamented that his father alone was not compensated for the losses caused by the spy case, Muraleedharan was in fact pointing his finger at Oommen Chandy, since it was the latter who took steps to close the case,” Cherian Philip said.