New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday directed former Telangana Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) chief T Prabhakar Rao, who is an accused in the phone-tapping case, to surrender before the police by 11 am on Friday.
A bench comprising justices B V Nagarathna and R Mahadevan said the order was passed for the purpose of further investigation into the offences against Rao.
“We direct the petitioner to surrender before the Jubilee Hills police station and the investigating officer by 11.00 am tomorrow… The custodial interrogation is to be done in accordance with the law. List on Friday. Liberty is reserved to the petitioner herein to have food from his home as well as medication regularly,” the bench said.
During the hearing, senior advocate Sidharth Luthra, appearing for the state, submitted that the iCloud accounts, which were opened, do not have any data, and the email addresses do not open.
On Wednesday, the state government had alleged that Rao was still withholding his iCloud accounts despite the court order.
The apex court on May 29 granted interim protection from coercive action to Rao and directed him to give an undertaking that he would return to India within three days after the receipt of his passport.
Rao has moved the top court challenging an order of the Telangana High Court, which dismissed his plea seeking anticipatory bail.
On May 22, a Hyderabad court issued a proclamation order against Rao in the phone tapping case.
According to the order, Rao may be declared a “proclaimed offender” if he does not appear before the court by June 20.
If a person is declared a proclaimed offender, the court can order the attachment of the properties of the accused.
A suspended DSP of SIB was among four police officials who were 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 and also conspiracy in destroying the records to cause the disappearance of evidence of their crimes, police earlier said.
