The Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) of the Telangana police tapped mobile phones of around 1,200 people, including political leaders, social activists, members of student organisations, business people, judges, lawyers and journalists during the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) regime headed by K Chandrasekhar Rao, a suspended deputy superintendent of police has confessed to the police.
Duggyala Praneeth Rao, who headed the special operations team (SOT) in SIB, gave his confession statement before the Panjagutta police on March 13, but it went public on Wednesday.
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Similar confession statements of retired deputy commissioner of police P Radha Kishan Rao and additional superintendents of police N Bhujanga Rao and M Thirupathanna have previously shed light on the telephone tapping case. Former SIB chief T Prabhakar Rao, the prime accused in the case, is at large.
Praneeth Rao, was part of Prabhakar Rao’s team in SIB as inspector since 2017 and got an out of turn promotion as Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) in March 2023. He was made in-charge of SOT ahead of the assembly elections in Telangana in November 2023.
In his confession statement, which has been reviewed by HT, Praneeth Rao admitted that he and his team of 56 snooped on leaders of opposition parties, and their funders and intercepted vehicles transferring money.
“We prepared profiles of around 1,200 persons, mostly political rivals of the BRS, with the help of a technological tool provided by a private firm M/s Convergence Innovation Labs, Hyderabad. We used to report directly to Prabhakar Rao, who provided all necessary support,” the suspended DSP said.
He confessed that he used to get the targets for profiling or surveillance from Prabhakar Rao and retired additional Superintendent of Police (SP) Venugopal Rao.
Soon after the formation of Congress government led by A Revanth Reddy on December 7, the intelligence department brought to the notice of the chief minister about the missing data from the computers and the hard disks and that old hard disks had been replaced with new ones.
An internal probe was ordered and this led to the suspension of Praneeth Rao, with the Panjagutta police registering a criminal case against him (as head of the SIB on March 10). By March 13, police arrested Praneeth Rao, and based on the information he gave, followed it up over the next two weeks with the arrests of Radha Kishan Rao, Bhujanga Rao andTirupathanna.
While the arrested cops are still in judicial custody, prime accused in the case Prabhakar Rao fled to the United States. A lookout notice has been issued against him.
Telangana Congress official spokesperson Ch Dayakar said the state government will not spare anyone involved in the phone tapping issue during the previous BRS regime. The party has called on the chief minister to dismiss all the officers who were involved and take over their assets. He questioned how the alleged phone tapping occured without the knowledge of the top leaders in the previous government.
Senior BRS leader and former minister S Niranjan Reddy dismissed the allegations that the phone tapping was carried out at the behest of the KCR government in the past. “The Congress government is deliberately leaking such false and baseless reports in the name of confession statements. They have no legal validity,” he said, warning of serious legal action if the present government continued to leak such claims to the media.
Praneeth Rao disclosed that during the 2023 elections, his team tapped several phones of supporters of opposition party candidates and also those who financially supported them. “We tracked the information about transportation of money by the opposition party leaders and supporters and got such cash seized. We showed it as hawala money with an intension of avoiding criticism by Election Commission.”
“On completion of the assembly elections on November 30, we stopped the surveillance. After the exit polls, the SIB chief told us to destroy all documentary and electronic evidence,” he said.
After the results of the Telangana assembly elections were declared, and the Congress emerged victorious, Prabhakar Rao resigned from his post. Before leaving office, he ordered SOT members to destroy all traces of political profiles and hard disks of the systems used for monitoring.
“As per his orders, I got the hard disks (around 50), documents and clandestine profiles destroyed after getting the closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in the SIB premises switched off with the help of Anil Kumar, a reserve sub-inspector,” Praneeth Rao said.
The entire destruction of evidence took place within 45 minutes – between 7.30 pm and 8.15 pm on December 4. The SOT chief called a few technical persons — Srinivas, Ananth and others from Convergence Innovation Labs, Hyderabad and returned their servers and hard disks.
“The hard disks of our 17 systems, laptop and other hard disks from the server were removed,” he said, adding that all the electronic gadgets were destroyed by a head constable using an electric cutter. Later, the destroyed hard disks and gadgets were dumped in the Musi river near Nagole.
Praneeth Rao was relieved from the SIB on December 13, 2023 and was later transferred to DCRB, Rajanna Sircilla district. He was suspended on March 4, 2024.
