Hyderabad: In yet another sensational claim with regard to the phone-tapping saga under the previous BRS government, Congress MLA from Achampet Vamshi Krishna on Tuesday wrote to the Telangana director general of police (DGP) claiming that his phone was tapped by Special Intelligence Branch (SIB) officers on instructions of an ex-MLA. He alleged that others in his constituency were also under surveillance.
Vamshi Krishna, who is also the District Congress Committee (DCC) president for Nagarkurnool, claimed that his phone was tapped allegedly under the instructions of a former MLA “in collusion with certain police officers” of the SIB from Hyderabad and Achampet town. He said that his employees and associates also received threatening calls in the past, and added that the alleged surveillance and phone tapping took place during the 2018-23 period.
However, this is not the first time that allegations of illegal surveillance have been made against the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) under ex-Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR). The state police is also currently investigating several allegations of phone-tapping against opposition leaders, all of which were made after the Congress came to power last year in the Assembly polls.
Former SIB chief T Prabhakar Rao, under whose time the surveillance was reportedly carried out, is currently untraceable. Former Task Force DCP Radhakishan Rao is currently under police custody for his involvement, while others like DSP Praneeth were already taking in for questioning weeks ago. It was also alleged that current Congress chief minister Revanth Reddy also had his phones tapped when he was the opposition leader.
So far no one from the BRS has been arrested, but allegations by Congress leaders have been made against party leaders for illegally snooping when they were in power.
“Based on information gathered by means of tapping their respective mobile phones, hundreds of citizens in Achampet constituency have been subjected to threat, coercion, and have undergone severe trauma. Some of them have stopped their business and shifter their families and settled in Hyderabad,” said Congress MLA Vamshi Krishna in his letter to the DGP. He urged the Telangana DGP to conduct an impartial inquiry, including the alleged role of the former MLA.
Though the Congress MLA did not name the ex-legislator, he was alluding to the involvement of ex-BRS Achampet MLA G Balaraju. Vamshi Krishna sought an analysis of data records pertaining to the mobile numbers associated with the “suspected individuals, including the former MLA and implicated police officers”. He also sought an examination of the surveillance equipment and logs maintained by the SIB during the previous election period.
