Phone tapping case: T''gana police form SIT

Hyderabad, Dec 18 (PTI) A nine-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) under overall supervision of City Police Commissioner V C Sajjanar was formed on Thursday to investigate the case of alleged phone tapping during the previous BRS regime, officials said.

The SIT shall complete investigation in the case and file charge sheet expeditiously, DGP B Shivadhar Reddy said.

Former Telangana intelligence chief T Prabhakar Rao, the prime accused in the case surrendered before police here on September 12 as per a Supreme Court directive.

Rao, the former chief of the SIB, had quit his post following BRS' loss in the 2023 assembly elections.

A suspended DSP of Telangana Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) was among four police officials who have been arrested by Hyderabad Police since March 2024 for allegedly erasing the intelligence information from various electronic gadgets as well as for alleged phone-tapping during the previous BRS regime. They were subsequently granted bail.

The accused are part of the alleged conspiracy in which they "misused" the resources of SIB for political purposes by putting citizens from different walks of life under surveillance, police had said.

Those named as accused in the case along with others had allegedly developed profiles of several persons unauthorisedly and were accused of monitoring them clandestinely and illegally in SIB and using them in a partisan manner to favour a political party at the behest of some persons.

They were also accused of conspiring in destroying the records to cause disappearance of evidence of their crimes, police had earlier said. PTI VVK VVK SA