Hyderabad: Police investigation revealed that the accused in the phone-tapping case destroyed the hard disks of computers at the Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) with cutters in 45 minutes on December 4, a day after Assembly election results were out.
About 1,200 phones of people including political opposition of the then ruling BRS, family members, judges, journalists, business people were tapped by the SIB, accused and suspended DSP Dugyala Praneeth Rao told investigating officials.
His confessional statement submitted to the court has recently come to light and it stated that they made profiles of 1000-1200 people and secretly listened to their conversations.
‘Evidence destroyed after election’
According to details, they had stopped phone-tapping on November 30, 2023 when elections were held. “SIB chief Prabhakar Rao ordered the team to destroy the electronic evidence and documents related to the tapping after the exit polls were released. I resigned from my post on December 4 after BRS lost the election,” the confession read.
“As he ordered to delete the evidence before leaving the office, we focused on destroying the evidence in the computers and servers. On the same night, I instructed RSI Anil Kumar to stop the CCTV cameras,” Rao further said in his testimony.
The statement from Praneeth Rao came after similar testimonies were given by other accused cops Radha Kishan Rao, Bhujanga Rao and Tirupatanna.
He had also revealed earlier that their team snooped on leaders of opposition parties and intercepted their vehicles transferring money during election campaigning. The money seized was shown as hawala money and thus the election commission was not suspicious about the seizures.
Similar testimonies have been given by other accused cops Radha Kishan Rao, Bhujanga Rao and Tirupathanna. Telangana States News India: Top News India, States News, States News Headlines, Online State News India, State Politics news
