Maldivian woman accuses Gujarat ex-DGP

Mariam Rasheeda, the Maldivian woman whose arrest triggered the infamous Isro spy case, has named former Gujarat DGP R B Sreekumar, then a joint director of the Intelligence Bureau, as one of the officers who physically tortured her in custody in 1994.

“The interrogators showed me photographs of two men and asked me if I knew them. When I said ‘no’, they asked me to identify them as Isro scientist Nambi Narayanan and inspector general Raman Srivastava. When I refused to identify these men whom I didn’t know, one officer lifted a chair and hit me on my left leg.

Mariam said the courts did not ask her any question, she was merely produced in various courts and she didn’t understand what was happening. Mariam said she was in touch with Fauziyya Hassan, another Maldivian woman who was a co-accused in the spy case, and that the two will move the SC and international forums of human rights, naming Sreekumar and then Kerala police officers Siby Mathews, S Vijayan, and Thambi Durgadutt.