More skeletons are tumbling out of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi’s cupboard with new revelations in the phone tapping case pointing towards the involvement of the party’s top leadership in snooping over political opponents.
Four senior police officers have already been arrested in the case involving the illegal tapping of phones of the opposition Congress leaders, businessmen and others when BRS was in power between 2014 and 2023. Those arrested included former Deputy Commissioner of Police at the Commissioner's Task Force, P Radhakishan Rao. He was the chief security officer to former Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and was later the special task force chief in the city.
Former Telangana Intelligence Bureau chief T Prabhakar Rao, the main accused in the case, is currently in the United States and is expected to return to the city ‘anytime this week.’
New details that emerged from the case on Monday caused major embarrassment to the regional party. Radhakishan Rao confessed before the police that his team had not only tapped the phones of opposition leaders and others but also facilitated the ‘transport of money bags in police vehicles’ on the behalf of the BRS leaders during elections.
“We did all this at the behest of top BRS leadership,” he admitted. According to the remand report filed by the police, the arrested cop also revealed that a team of senior police officials was entrusted with the task of tapping the phones of the opposition Congress leaders. Based on the information gathered through snooping, raids were conducted and huge cash was seized from the offices, homes and vehicles of opposition leaders.
Three other officers— Additional Superintendents of Police Bhujanga Rao and Thirupathanna, and Deputy SP Praneeth Rao - have already been arrested. They had admitted to monitoring private individuals illegally and destroying the evidence.
The list of individuals whose devices were reportedly monitored include Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, who was then the opposition leader, and members of the BJP and Congress, as well as some leaders from KCR's own party. It is reported that over one lakh phone calls were tapped.
DSP Praneeth Rao is accused of developing profiles of several persons and monitoring them clandestinely, without authorisation and illegally, besides destroying certain computer systems and official data.
Based on a complaint filed by an additional superintendent of police of the Special Intelligence Bureau on March 10, a case was registered against Praneeth Rao and others at Panjagutta police station in the city on charges of criminal breach of trust by a public servant, causing disappearance of evidence, and criminal conspiracy and other sections of IPC, and IT Act-2000.
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