Hyderabad: The Telangana government told the state High Court that it anticipates Interpol will soon issue a red corner notice for T Prabhakar Rao, the former chief of the Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB), in connection with a phone tapping case.
Public prosecutor Palle Nageswara Rao informed the Telangana High Court that the state had requested the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which acts as the nodal officer for Interpol, to assist in apprehending Rao, who is currently a fugitive and is identified as the primary suspect in the illegal phone tapping allegations.
During the court proceedings overseen by Justice Juvvadi Sridevi, the prosecutor stated that the CBI has completed its part of the investigation, and now the government is hopeful that Interpol will take action.
Govt opposes bail plea of ex Addl SP
This plea coincides with a bail request from Mekala Thirupathanna, a former additional superintendent of police and accused number four in the case, who is currently in judicial custody.
Opposing the bail plea, Nageswara Rao informed the court that Prabhakar Rao, along with five others including Thirupathanna, significantly disrupted the lives of many individuals through the illegal interception of phone calls to assist the then-ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).
He noted that following the BRS’s loss of power, two of the accused fled the country to evade justice.
The remaining suspects have allegedly destroyed critical evidence, including hard drives and vital materials.
‘4500 phone lines tapped between Nov 15-30 in 2023’
In a shocking revelation, the prosecutor stated that they discovered approximately 4,500 phone lines were tapped from non-Airtel subscribers between November 15 and 30, 2023, coinciding with the assembly election period.
“When we attempted to gather information from the remaining phone numbers associated with BSNL, Jio, and Vodafone, we were astonished to discover that approximately 4,500 phones had been tapped from these non-Airtel networks between November 15 and 30, 2023, during the assembly election period,” the public prosecutor stated.
He informed the court that the data they have pertains to only 20% of the tapped phones, while 80% belong to the Airtel network, which they could not recover due to the accused destroying the relevant devices.
Nageswara Rao revealed that the Special Intelligence team operated without restraint, violating all regulations regarding phone interception and illegally tapping the phones of as many as 190 Congress leaders.
He stated that their primary targets included A. Revanth Reddy, who was then the opposition leader and chief minister, along with his family members and associates.
The public prosecutor revealed that a significant amount of information related to Revanth Reddy was retrieved from the phones of accused Thirupathanna.
They were able to recover approximately 340 GB of data belonging to various individuals from Thirupathanna’s devices.
The prosecutor also mentioned that BJP leader Eatala Rajender’s phone, as well as those of his gunman and cameraman, were tapped as part of the illegal surveillance operation.
Thirupathanna’s counsel, V Surender, argued that the state government had already filed a chargesheet in the case and that his client was merely following orders from his superiors.
