Telangana SIT Questions Former CM KCR in Phone Tapping Case, BRS Holds Protests Across State

Hyderabad: Former Telangana chief minister and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) president K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Sunday (February 1) appeared before a special investigation team (SIT) of the state police which is probing alleged phone tapping carried out by the BRS government against its political rivals with the aid of intelligence wing of the police ahead of the assembly elections in November 2023 when the party was voted out of power.

The questioning of Rao that began at his residence in Nandinagar in Banjara Hills here around 3 pm concluded around 8 pm during which protests and demonstrations by BRS cadre erupted across the state. Later, Rao, looking visibly tired, came out and waved to the waiting crowd from the balcony of the house.

The appearance of Rao as a witness in the case was supposedly the culmination of serial questioning of top leaders of the BRS under Section 160 of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) which empowers an investigating police officer to summon in writing any person acquainted with the facts and circumstances of the case. Rao's son and BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao, son-in-law and former Minister T. Harish Rao and nephew J. Santosh Kumar, a former Rajya Sabha member, were summoned a few days earlier to the office of the SIT at the Jubilee Hills police station to face the probe.

In the case of  Rao, however, the former chief minister was given the option of either turning up at the police station or any other place within Hyderabad city on January 30 as he was above the age of 65 years which insulated him from going to the police station compulsorily under provisions of Sec 160 CrPC. But, Rao sought another date, citing the fact that he was busy with finalising the party candidates and issuing to them authorisation letters to contest the upcoming municipal elections in the state. He suggested to the investigating officer that the questioning be done at his farmhouse in Erravelli village of Siddipet district. Incidentally, January 30 was also the last date for filing nominations.

Rao's six page letter to the investigating officer

The police then served him another notice declining to go to the farmhouse and instead urged him to present himself at his Nandinagar residence on Sunday (February 1). It was conveyed to him that his house at Nandinagar figured in the official records and, therefore, a place which was not his residence could not be considered for investigation. The police pasted the notice on the compound wall of the house.

Taking strong exception to the manner in which he was summoned, Rao wrote a six page letter to the investigating officer who was of the rank of an Assistant Commissioner of Police, highlighting the violation of Supreme Court verdicts and dignity of office that he held in issuing summons. He also questioned the jurisdiction and power of the official to issue the summons as he was not residing within Jubilee Hills police station limits. Therefore the notice was illegal and ultra vires provisions of Section 160 of CrPC and not binding on him, said Rao in the letter.

Though "you are duty bound to record my statement at my place of residing i.e. Erravelli and no other place, I will be available for my examination at 3 PM on Sunday (as required by notice) as a former chief minister, present leader of opposition and a responsible citizen to assist the investigation", he added.

His decision paved the way for the police to proceed but not without the BRS giving a call to its cadre to stage protest demonstrations across the state. The police beefed up security on the road leading to Rao's residence to prevent surging crowds even as a large number of supporters gathered at the BRS office nearby. Elsewhere, crowds staged blocked roads, took out bike rallies and even tried to lay siege to the ministers' quarters here. The police pushed back the crowd when it tried to force its way to chief minister A. Revanth Reddy's house from the BRS office.

After the questioning, his son and BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao spoke to the media and said that Rao fielded every question of the five member probe team with authority. The officials were convinced that the BRS government did nothing wrong, he said and hoped the proceedings would be over with this.

Rama Rao added that the date (February 1) was deliberately fixed by the government to coincide with the presentation of the Union budget as part of "diversion politics" of the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Both parties were aware that there was nothing for Telangana in the budget. Therefore, the day was chosen to shift focus from their failures, Rama Rao alleged.

As regards the controversy over the venue of questioning, Rama Rao said former CM Rao could have easily got the notice that asked him to travel all the way to Hyderabad from Erravelli quashed by the court, as law was in his favour but chose against it as a responsible citizen.

The BRS reacted wildly to the summons to Rao saying it hurt the self-respect of Telangana as he was the crusader who got statehood for Telangana. At the same time, the targeting of its leaders, particularly Rao, was not without mileage for the party ahead of municipal polls.

A former BRS MP, B. Vinod Kumar told The Wire that the summons were issued with political vengeance. He ruled out interference by ruling parties in intelligence gathering by the police by tapping phones of the opposition. He said that every political party had a wider network than the police to track down adversaries or their activities.

However, Telangana Congress committee president B. Mahesh Kumar Goud, who was also summoned by the SIT in the past based on a complaint by him prior to 2023 Assembly elections that his phone was tapped, said the BRS government resorted to tapping phones of not only political leaders but industrialists, big contractors, film actresses and even judges. He denied political vengeance by the Congress government and said phone tapping had become part of BRS's blackmailing tactics to rein in those supporting the Congress. That was the main reason for Congress's defeat in the 2018 Assembly election, he said.

Goud alleged that police officers carried out extortion from industrialists after listening to their phone conversations. The officers also tracked the movements of ruling party MLAs, he claimed.

On the question of self-respect of Telangana sacrificed now, Goud recalled that  Chandrasekhar Rao had kept legendary Telugu balladeer Gaddar waiting outside the former's huge bungalow for seven hours on a summer day when he wanted to meet the VVIP. Gaddar was credited with contributing immensely to the Telangana Statehood movement through his song and dance. Besides Goud, Union minister of state for home Bandi Sanjay Kumar and BJP MP Konda Visweswar Reddy were among others questioned by SIT.

BJP State president N. Ramchander Rao said the probe was an eyewash as the accused in the case were examined like witnesses, especially after prima facie evidence surfaced against them. "Make them accused, arrest them and then question them like it was done with those already accused in the case", Rao, a senior lawyer himself, told The Wire.

"Prima facie evidence was already gathered when audio tapes of three middlemen who negotiated with four BRS MLAs to join the BJP were produced by Chandrasekhar Rao at a news conference in October 2022", Ramchander Rao added.

 The Congress government was not serious in the case as it wanted to help the BRS because the latter party went slow in the cash for vote scam against the chief minister Revanth Reddy when he was in the opposition, the state BJP chief alleged.

The alleged phone tapping case and arrests so far

The case was registered on March 10, 2024, under provisions of Indian Penal Code, Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act and Information Technology Act, three months after Congress returned to power, at Panjagutta police station under whose limits the Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) of police is located.

It was alleged that the SIB, a sub-unit of the intelligence wing of police which keeps surveillance on the movements of Naxalites, terrorists and other hardcore criminals by tapping their phones, was used by the BRS against Congress and other political rivals. The SIB's net was alleged to be expanded to include access to call data records and Internet protocol data records of targets of the BRS.

A deputy superintendent of police D. Praneeth Rao, who was later suspended, was said to be the key official entrusted with the task of tapping the phones. He was the first person to be arrested in the case on March 13, 2024, on the charge of destroying harddisks containing the data of SIB office, including crucial Naxalite records, and replacing them with new ones. A substantial intelligence information of the SIB was found to be erased from the electronic devices of the office.

Thereafter, two additional superintendents of police in the SIB, M. Thirupatanna and M. Bhujanga Rao, and P. Radhakishan Rao, a deputy commissioner of police posted at the task force wing of Hyderabad city police were also arrested but all of them were released on bail later. Radhakishan Rao was accused of using strongarm tactics against the targeted persons based on the phone conversations heard by Praneeth Rao.

Following the arrest of Praneeth Rao, the SIB chief T. Prabhakar Rao fled to the US from Tirupathi. A TV channel owner, A. Shravan Kumar Rao, who was accused of extending technology support to the officials also fled to the US.

A chargesheet was filed in the case in June 2024 in which the officials were charged with allegedly intercepting more than 1,200 phones, including those of politicians, judges, businessmen and journalists, during the BRS regime. The chargesheet also narrated the alleged destruction of key evidence, including servers and hard disks, to cover up the operation.

The data was subsequently retrieved from cloud accounts with the assistance of technology company Apple and forensic science laboratory  A red corner notice was issued against Prabhakar Rao and Shravan Kumar. The Telangana police requested the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to revoke the passport of Prabhakar Rao, However, he moved the Supreme Court seeking anticipatory bail as he was suffering with cancer and offered to cooperate with the investigation on returning home. After fifteen months, the Supreme Court granted him interim protection from arrest in June last. Shravan Kumar was also granted relief by the Supreme Court but he was arrested and sent to jail in a different case booked at the central crime station of Hyderabad police.

Prabhakar Rao appeared before the SIT a dozen times after returning from the US but the investigating team reportedly could not make much headway due to his reluctance in sharing information. Then, the SIT moved the Supreme Court seeking his arrest.

While rejecting Prabhakar Rao's bail plea and ordering him to surrender before the SIT for custodial interrogation only in December, the court directed the agency not to cause any physical harm to him. The key allegation levelled against him was lack of recoverable data from the two phones that he used. Though the cloud accounts of his phones were accessed, they did not contain any data.

It was only after his custodial interrogation for two weeks that the SIB shifted the probe against BRS leadership with focus on the identity of the mastermind behind the conspiracy and those who directed the operations. In this background, summons were served in the last few days on Harish Rao initially and then to Rama Rao, Santosh Kumar and now Chandrasekhar Rao. As of now, the main accused in the case is Prabhakar Rao followed by police officials Radhakishan Rao, Thirupatanna, Bhujanga Rao and Praneeth Rao and TV channel owner Shravan Kumar.

Both Prabhakar Rao and Radhakishan Rao had retired from service on superannuation but were re-employed by BRS government as officers on special duty. In fact, Prabahakar Rao was also placed at the helm of the intelligence department of police as chief of SIB.

Radhakishan Rao had confided in a confession statement recorded by SIT and submitted to court that he merely carried out the instructions of the "top man", referring to then chief minister Rao. However, former CM Rao had brushed aside the allegation at a news conference saying a chief minister gets reports from a police officer. "How he gets it, is his duty. Whether he resorts to tapping or paying money to middlemen is his look out", Rao remarked.

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