Hyderabad police crossed the first crucial step of legal proceedings in the sensational ‘telephone tapping’ case with a local court here accepting the chargesheet they had filed.
The 12th Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) court judge, V. Eshwaraiah, had taken cognisance of the chargesheet filed by the police, having declined it twice earlier on certain parameters. The court had assigned a PRC (Preliminary Register Case) number to the chargesheet and sent it to the Metropolitan Sessions Judge of Nampally Criminal Courts for committal. The trial of the case, in which five police officers were made accused and four of them arrested, is likely to commence soon after completion of remaining formalities.
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The telephone tapping case, registered by Punjagutta police of West zone, involved serious charges of some police officers eavesdropping on the conversations of politicians, public representatives, mediapersons, officials and businessmen at the behest of their political bosses during the second stint of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government in 2018-23. The Congress won the Assembly elections in December 2023, shattering BRS’ hopes of emerging victorious for the third consecutive term.
Within four months of the Congress taking over and A. Revanth Reddy being sworn in as Chief Minister, an FIR was issued by Panjagutta police with allegations that Deputy Superintendent of Police D. Praneeth Rao, working in the Special Intelligence Branch (SIB), had destroyed electronic devices at his disposal in the office resulting in erasure of crucial data and breach of trust. As the probe progressed, higher-ups transferred the case to Jubilee Hills to be investigated by Assistant Commissioner of Police P. Venkatagiri.
Claiming that they stumbled upon evidence that Praneeth Rao, at the behest T. Prabhakar Rao, in-charge of SIB, had indulged in the interception of phone conversation of persons targeted by BRS political bosses, the investigators added sections of the Information Technology Act and other provisions of Indian Penal Code. They eventually arrested Additional Superintendent of Police N. Bhujanga Rao, Deputy Superintendent of Police M. Thirupathanna and former Hyderabad Police Commissioner’s Task Force in-charge P. Radhakishan Rao.
Former IPS officer and chief of SIB, Mr. Prabhakar Rao, who was made the prime accused in the case, had left for the USA a few days before the registration of the case. Investigators wanted to question him, but recently he wrote to the police seeking more time to return to India as he was besieged with health issues.
All the four arrested police officers are still in prison (judicial custody). Their bail pleas have been rejected by the sessions court. The chargesheet contained the recorded statements of 34 persons, the majority of them being personnel of SIB, an intelligence wing known for its exemplary work in gathering information about Left-wing extremism. Statements of over 20 persons were recorded under section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
The electronic devices and computers allegedly destroyed by the accused were recovered by the investigators. They got the seized hard discs and other devices examined by the forensic experts and presented those as evidence. Some of the hard discs allegedly thrown into the Musi river by the accused were also recovered.
Initially, the 12th ACMM rejected the chargesheet citing wrongly mentioned details pertaining to dates and other facts though the police claimed they were typo errors. The chargesheet filed for the second time was also not accepted as the investigators could not present communication about the consent of the government to prosecute the police officers.
Finally, the police secured permission from the government for the prosecution of all the police officers accused in the case and submitted the chargesheet.
