Former Telangana Cop Arrested For Tapping Opposition Leaders' Phones

A former senior police officer who worked in Telangana's Special Intelligence Bureau has been arrested after shocking allegations that he has destroyed critical information in several digital documents that were on multiple hard disks. The complaint was filed by his senior, who says he found several physical and electronic documents had gone missing in 2024.

Sources say the former officer was also allegedly involved in illegally tapping the phones of nearly 50 important people in the state. The victims allegedly included opposition leaders and family members of those close to the leadership of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi, which was the ruling party at the time. 

Former Deputy Superintendent of Police Praneeth Rao, aka Praneeth Kumar, is accused of erasing about 10 lakh call records on December 4, a day after the Telangana Assembly election results were announced. He allegedly turned off CCTV cameras and destroyed old hard drives containing data gathered over decades as well as information illegally gathered by him. To cover his tracks, he replaced these hard drives with new ones. 

Rao was arrested by the Punjagutta police on Tuesday night in the Rajanna-Sircilla district and was then taken to Hyderabad. The complaint against him was filed by the SIB's Additional Superintendent of Police D Ramesh.

A statement from the office of the Hyderabad Deputy Commissioner of Police (West Zone), Vijay Kumar, said the case was registered against Rao and others for "copying intelligence information into his personal drives illegally in collusion with unknown persons, misusing and abusing his official position". It said he has been sent to judicial custody for 14 days. 

Some of the other allegations against Rao are that he acquired illegal assets by blackmailing real estate operators, manipulated and destroyed intelligence data, made personal copies of sensitive data while destroying official records, and damaged official devices.

According to the first information report, Rao had two rooms exclusively to himself and operated with 17 systems issued to him while working in the SIB. He also had an exclusive and dedicated leased line with an internet connection. Through this setup, he "developed profiles of unknown persons and monitored the same clandestinely, unauthorisedly and illegally", the complaint states.

Rao has been charged with criminal breach of trust, mischief causing damage, destroying evidence, criminal conspiracy, common intention, and sections of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act as well as the Information Technology Act.