Scientists should be made immune from arbitrary police action such as registration of case or arrest, former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientist Nambi Narayanan said here on Sunday. Clear-cut guidelines must be devised for the law enforcement agencies to deal with scientists.
On November 30, 1994, Mr. Nambi Narayanan, then head of ISRO’s Cryogenic Division, was arrested by the Kerala police on the charge that he had traded the country’s space secrets to foreign agents. It took more than two decades for him to prove his innocence in the fabricated spy scandal case. He was here for a special screening of Rocketry: The Nambi effect, a film based on his life.
“I think the scientific community needs some kind of immunity from such action. It is not just ISRO...scientists working in the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Atomic Energy and others too. As part of their job, they travel a lot... They have to be protected from random police action...else you can go on booking people and put them behind the bars,” he said.
