Former chief of Telangana's Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) T Prabhakar Rao was named as the main accused in a phone-tapping scandal that has gripped the state ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. On Rao's orders, data was collected by illegally tapping the phones of opposition leaders during the previous BRS government led by K Chandrashekhar Rao.
Searches were conducted at T Prabhakar's house in Hyderabad along with about a dozen other places, including the residence of Shravan Rao, who runs a Telugu TV channel called I News.
Many more police officers under radar
Sharvan Rao allegedly helped install phone-tapping equipment and servers imported from Israel on the premises of a local school. Another police official Radha Kishan Rao was also named as an accused in this case. Several other Telangana police officers are being investigated in connection to the case.
Apart from these, SP N Bhujanga Rao and Additional DCP Thirupathanna, along with Deputy SP Praneeth Rao have already been arrested. Police said Bhujanga Rao and Tirupathanna, who were arrested last week, have confessed to illegally conducting surveillance of private individuals and destroying evidence.
Praneet Rao, who was arrested earlier this month, was accused of creating profiles of unknown persons and monitoring their activities in an unauthorized manner as well as destroying data stored on certain computer systems and electronic gadgets. The evidence was allegedly destroyed on the orders of Prabhakar Rao. The order was given a day after Congress defeated BRS in the 2023 elections.
Phones were tapped of these people
The individuals whose gadgets were monitored include Chief Minister Revanth Reddy along with members of the BJP, Congress and people from former Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's BRS. There are also reports that Telugu actors and businessmen were also monitored and many of them were blackmailed. According to sources, more than one lakh phone calls were tapped.
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