BJP Leaders Eatala, Premender Reddy Depose In Telangana Phone-Tapping Case
BJP leaders Eatala Rajender and G Premender Reddy on Tuesday deposed before the police as witnesses in the case related to alleged illegal phone tapping during the previous BRS regime in Telangana. Speaking to reporters, Lok Sabha MP Rajender claimed that his phones were tapped (to defeat him) when he contested the bypoll to Huzurabad assembly constituency as a BJP candidate in 2021.
The officials presented him with evidence of phone tapping, he claimed.
The phone tapping took place during the 2023 assembly elections, he alleged and likened the situation to the imposition of Emergency in 1975.
Rajender further alleged that even his conversations with his wife were subjected to tapping.
He demanded that the Congress government hand over the probe into the case to the CBI if it lacked the courage to bring out the truth.
The BJP MP wondered whether the state government was sincere in completing the probe and taking action as the ongoing investigations into power purchase agreements (PPA), Kaleshwaram project and phone-tapping during the BRS regime are moving at a snail's pace.
Rajender also demanded punishment for those who authorised phone tapping.
Meanwhile, Premender Reddy, General Secretary of Telangana BJP, also called for tough punishment for those responsible for phone-tapping.
State Congress president and MLC B Mahesh Kumar Goud gave his statement before the police as a witness in the phone-tapping case on June 17.
Authorities are currently questioning the former Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) chief of Telangana, T Prabhakar Rao, the prime accused, in the alleged phone-tapping case.
Prabhakar Rao has been accused of forming a "Special Operations Team" under a suspended DSP within the SIB for carrying out certain specific tasks related to political surveillance to benefit the then ruling political party and its leaders.
The suspended DSP of the SIB was among the four police officials arrested by the Hyderabad police since March 2024 for allegedly erasing intelligence information from various electronic gadgets, as well as for phone-tapping during the BRS regime. They were subsequently granted bail.
Those named as accused in the case, along with others, had allegedly developed profiles of several people in an unauthorised manner and were accused of monitoring them clandestinely and illegally in the SIB and using them in a partisan manner to favour a political party at the behest of some people.
(This report has been published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. Apart from the headline, no editing has been done in the copy by ABP Live.)
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