No Authorisation Sought: Telangana Chief Secretary On Phone-Tapping Case

The Special Intelligence Bureau had not taken permission to tap phones of selected people, a Telangana home department official has said in an affidavit filed in the phone tapping case. Chief secretary Ravi Gupta has said the then Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) chief T Prabhakar Rao had not taken permission from him.

In the affidavit filed before the Telangana high court, Mr Gupta said Prabhakar Rao had been brought in as SIB chief for three years after his retirement from the intelligence wing. He played a key role in tapping phones of various people to help the state's erstwhile Bharat Rashtra Samithi government.

The senior IPS officer filed the affidavit in response to a notice issued by the High Court, which has taken up the phone tapping case as a suo motu writ petition.

Ravi Gupta was the state home secretary from Oct 2019 to Dec 2022, when the alleged unauthorised phone tapping began and continued for another year. The home secretary is the competent authority for allowing interception.

Mr Gupta was brought back as the competent authority for the home department as special CS from July 9 this year, when he was moved from the post of the DGP.

"The then state government had issued separate orders allowing three senior IPS officers to permit interception on an urgent basis if there was no time to take approval from the competent authority (home secretary). But all such urgent actions had to be approved by the competent authority/home secretary later," Mr Gupta said.

The government, he added, had issued an order on July 20, 2020, making Mr Rao the designated authority for carrying out phone tapping. The state government had conveyed the same to the telecom department, telecom companies and internet providers. But even this designated authority had to obtain post-facto approval from the competent authority (home secretary) to get his action ratified, Mr Gupta said in his affidavit.

"In many cases, the team led by Mr Rao went ahead with intercepting phones and internet of even constitutional functionaries without taking post-facto approval," Gupta said, adding that the requirement is for the approval to be taken within seven days.

He also reportedly said he had realised the criminal nature of the activities of Rao and his team only after seeing the chargesheet in the phone-tapping case.

Mr Gupta has urged the court to close the suo moto case, pointing out that the investigating authorities have carried out extensive work and a chargesheet has already been filed in court and a supplementary charge sheet will be filed soon, reflecting the additional evidence gathered.

In the same case, an affidavit filed by the MHA official said their approval was not taken for the phone-tapping as the state's home department is also a competent authority to issue an order for interception of the phones of any subscriber registered in his state.