(Image source from: Etvbharat.com)
Telangana Phone Tapping case takes new Turns:- On the day the Congress party emerged victorious in the Assembly elections, December 4, 2023, a curious incident occurred within the premises of the Special Intelligence Branch (SIB). From 7:30 pm to 8:15 pm, the CCTV cameras were mysteriously turned off. During this 45-minute window, the then Deputy Superintendent of Police, D. Praneeth Rao, confessed that around 50 hard drives from the computer systems and servers used for phone tapping were swapped with new ones, and the removed drives were subsequently destroyed. Rao also admitted that the cash seized from Opposition leaders was falsely labeled as 'hawala' money, a tactic employed to avoid criticism from the Election Commission and political parties. He further revealed that he had received directives from IGP Prabhakar Rao and retired Additional SP Venugopal Rao to profile and monitor specific targets. These surveillance activities were halted on November 30, 2023, upon the completion of the Assembly elections. After the exit polls were released, the SIB chief instructed Rao and his team to eliminate all documentary and electronic evidence.
The laptops we used were essential tools for our covert and unauthorized activities. On December 4, 2023, after the Congress party's electoral victory, Prabhakar Rao, the head of our operations, resigned from his position. Before departing, he instructed us to erase all traces of political profiles and the hard drives of the systems used for monitoring purposes. In compliance with his orders, I arranged for the destruction of approximately 50 hard drives, documents, and clandestine profile data. This was achieved by coordinating with Anil Kumar, an RSI employee, to temporarily disable the CCTV cameras in the SIB premises. Initially, Anil Kumar was reluctant to switch off the cameras, but after I informed the SIB chief, he was summoned and directed to follow my instructions. On my orders, Anil Kumar turned off the CCTV cameras from 7:30 pm to 8:15 pm on December 4, 2023. During this time, Srinivas, Ananth, and other individuals from Convergence Innovation Labs in Hyderabad were called to the office and entrusted with the servers and hand disks. Additionally, Harikrishna, an RSI employee, removed the hard drives from our 17 systems, laptops, and other servers.
Superintendent of Police K Krishna destroyed the electronic devices using an electric cutter. Praneeth was dismissed from SIP on 13 December 2023 and transferred to DCRP in Rajanna Sirchilla district. He was suspended on March 4, 2024 for illegal actions such as deleting profiles and hard drives and disabling surveillance cameras. “If the police and middlemen follow me, I can show the SIB office the computer systems in which I changed the hard drives. “I formatted my personal electronic devices like phones and laptops and threw away the USB drives to erase the traces of the crime,” Jubilee Hills ACP P Venkatagiri Rao confessed in a statement to Pranitha Rao, who handed over three mobile phones and a laptop .
