Hyderabad, June 17 (IANS) Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President B. Mahesh Kumar Goud on Tuesday demanded that those involved in the phone-tapping under the previous government of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) should be punished.
He said the then ruling party leaders who ordered tapping of phones of their political rivals and the IAS and IPS officers who obeyed the orders should be punished.
He was talking to media persons after recording his statement as a witness before the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the state police probing the phone tapping allegations.
Goud said the guilty should be punished stringently so that in future no government should dare to indulge in such illegal and unethical activity.
He claimed that the Congress party suffered defeats in Telangana due to illegal phone tapping of its leaders by the BRS government.
He alleged that the BRS government tapped the phones of several Congress leaders. He said his and the Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy’s phones were also tapped.
Goud said that on suspicion that his phone was being tapped, he had lodged a complaint with the police. “Today, the facts have come out. Phones of senior Congress leaders have been tapped since 2022. We learnt that there are names of 650 Congress leaders in the SIT’s list of those whose phones were illegally tapped,” he said.
He alleged that the previous government threw the Telegraph Act to the wind to indulge in illegal activity. Goud remarked that BRS leaders KCR and KTR should hang their heads in shame for indulging in this act.
The state Congress chief said the SIT investigations are revealing how the BRS misused power to resort to phone tapping. He said the previous government appointed T. Prabhakar Rao as intelligence chief after his retirement. He claimed that such a thing did not happen anywhere in the country.
The statement of Goud, who is also a member of the Telangana Legislative Council, is likely to be significant in the ongoing probe.
On a request by the Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) of Jubilee Hills, the TPCC President appeared before him.
Goud, who served as the working president of the TPCC in November 2023, was allegedly a victim of illegal phone tapping.
Meanwhile, former Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) chief, T Prabhakar Rao, the prime accused in the case, once again appeared before the SIT on Tuesday.
Prabhakar Rao had allegedly formed a Special Operations Team under a suspended DSP within the SIB to tap phones of leaders of the opposition parties and some other individuals to benefit the then ruling political party and its leaders.
Prabhakar Rao on Tuesday appeared for the fourth time before the SIT since his return from the United States on June 8.
Prabhakar Rao has reportedly confessed that a special team was constituted in the SIB to tap the phones of certain individuals.
The phones of political leaders, businessmen, celebrities, journalists, members of civil society and even judges were allegedly tapped by the team.
The retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officer was grilled based on the statements of former deputy superintendent of police D Praneeth Rao, retired deputy commissioner of police P Radha Kishan Rao and additional superintendents of police N Bhujanga Rao and M. Thirupathanna, who were all arrested in the case last year and were recently released on bail.
These officials had earlier told the SIT that they had acted on the instructions of Prabhakar Rao, who was heading the SIB.
–IANS
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