Bangalore: Only few men of his age would have the guts to take on the establishment and clear his name as former Isro scientist S. Nambi Narayanan has done.

Kerala police had arrested Narayanan, now 76, and his colleague D. Sasikumaran in December 1994 on the charge of "stealing and selling secrets" related to the space agency's rocket project to two Maldivian women based in India.

While the Supreme Court dismissed all charges against them in 1998, Narayanan continued to wage a battle to win back his credibility.

Now the Supreme Court has ordered a judicial inquiry into why the police fabricated the case. Narayanan made it clear that he would have preferred a CBI probe against deputy inspector-general Siby Mathew, deputy superintendent of police K.K. Joshwa and inspector S. Vijayan.

"I expected a CBI probe against them," he told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram minutes after the court verdict on Friday.

While he reserved a detailed reaction until he gets a copy of the court order, Narayanan appeared relieved. "It's better than what it was yesterday," said the scientist who fought for 24 years to fully erase the slightest of doubts on his integrity.

"I had not asked for any compensation. All I had pleaded for in open court was to punish them (the police officers)," he said.

Now, Narayanan, who is credited with building India's first liquid-propellant motors that later matured into the cryogenic engines that continue to power PSLVs and GSLVs into orbit, has reason to smile.

"In my knowledge no police officer had (ever) been punished for illegal detention and torture. Now that's happened. At least in that angle it's a historic judgment," said the scientist who had to spend 50 days in jail and endure third-degree torture that required hospitalisation.

In his memoir Ormakalude Bhramanapadham (Orbit of Memories), Narayanan had accused the CIA of triggering his misery since the US intelligence agency allegedly didn't want India to develop cryogenic engines with the help of Russia.

The police had arrested Narayanan and Sasikumaran under the Official Secrets Act and charged them with selling rocket technology secrets to Maldivian "spies" Mariam Rasheeda and Fousiya Hassan. Deputy inspector-general Raman Srivatsava, who was close to then chief minister K. Karunakaran, had also been arrested in the spy scandal.

Considering the "national security" angle at play, the Intelligence Bureau soon took over the case. It claimed to have seized 75kg of "classified information" from Narayanan's house.

With the stage set for a steamy spy story involving top-notch rocket scientists and two foreign women, Malayalam newspapers serialised how the "secrets" were eventually routed to Pakistan spy agency ISI.

The newspapers published articles laced with salacious details that portrayed the Maldivian women as replicas of the early 20th century Dutch dancer and World War I spy, Mata Hari.

But the CBI, which investigated the case in 1996, found just hot air and a lot of baseless imagination in the entire episode that had by then destroyed the careers of the two scientists.

While the police and the IB alleged that Narayanan had earned huge sums by selling secrets, the CBI found he lived in a modest home with just a few cane chairs in the living room.

In the process, India's long-desired cryogenic engine project got delayed by more than a decade.

The CBI found that the two Maldivian women were low-level informers hired by their government to keep an eye on the country's students in India protesting against President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

It was also found that Rasheeda was on her way back to the Maldives when flights were cancelled because of a plague scare in India. Holding a return ticket, she had approached Thiruvananthapuram police in October 1994 for extension of her 90-day visa-free period allowed to Maldivian nationals. She had then bragged about knowing Sasikumaran, whom she had met casually at an event and had his landline number in her diary.

The Supreme Court dismissed all charges in 1998, and the scientists returned to work. The women eventually went back to the Maldives.

Narayanan approached the National Human Rights Commission, which passed strictures against the Kerala government for spoiling the scientist's distinguished career.

By then the three police officers had been booked for cooking up the spy case. But the Congress government under chief minister Oommen Chandy dropped all charges in 2012.

The scandal had a political casualty in Congress leader Karunakaran who had to resign as chief minister since his friend Srivastava was among those arrested. The apex court eventually acquitted the police officer, who is the current chief minister's adviser on police matters.