In a scene of high drama and political tension, Bharat Rashtra Samithi working president KT Rama Rao (KTR) arrived at the Jubilee Hills police station on Friday morning to face questioning by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) over the long-running phone-tapping scandal. While KTR was allowed into the station for the 11 AM appointment, several senior party figures, including former Minister T Harish Rao, were blocked at the entrance by a heavy police contingent.
The morning began with a chaotic standoff at Telangana Bhavan. As KTR prepared to head to the police station, hundreds of party workers attempted to follow his convoy, leading to a scuffle with the police. In an effort to contain the crowd, officers forcibly shuttered the gates of the party headquarters— a move BRS leaders described as turning their office into a "virtual prison." Several party workers, including women members, were reportedly injured in the push-and-pull as police tried to disperse the gathering.
Despite the heavy presence of barricades along the route to Jubilee Hills, a determined group of supporters followed the convoy on bikes and cars. Outside the police station, the tension remained palpable as the former ministers, Errabelli Dayakar Rao and Koppula Eshwar, and other MLAs staged a sit-in on the road. The government’s move had been labeled an "authoritarian approach," with the police training their guns on the opposition MLA and the government trying to shift the spotlight with a politically motivated move by the SIT.
Before heading into the station, KTR addressed the media, maintaining that neither he nor his party had ever engaged in illegal surveillance. He labelled the investigation a "diversionary drama" and a campaign of "character assassination" by the Congress government. He also questioned why the previous tenure’s senior intelligence officials were not being interrogated if the case was impartial.
Such an inquiry signals a major shift in the case, particularly as it follows only a few days after Harish Rao was interrogated for over seven hours. While the case continues to remain under the spotlight as the SIT continues to probe into the allegation that the ex-BRS dispensation had been monitoring the conversations of political rivals, judges, and journalists, the political climate in the city seems to have hit a boiling point.
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