Harish gets notices in phone tapping case

Hyderabad: The Telangana Police Special Investigating Team probing the alleged phone-tapping during the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi regime has issued a notice to former minister and BRSLP deputy leader T Harish Rao asking him to appear before it at the Jubilee Hills Police Station at 11 am here on Tuesday.

The nine-member SIT, comprising senior officers, is headed by Hyderabad Police Commissioner V C Sajjanar.

It is said that the police have issued notices to Harish Rao, nephew of BRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao, based on a statement given by the MD of a private channel.

On January 4, BRS MLC Naveen Rao appeared before the SIT in connection with the case. Former Telangana intelligence chief T Prabhakar Rao, the prime accused in the case, was earlier questioned by the SIT.

A suspended DSP of Telangana Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) was among four police officials who have been arrested by the Hyderabad Police since March 2024 for allegedly erasing the intelligence information from various electronic gadgets as well as for alleged phone-tapping during the previous BRS regime. They were subsequently granted bail.

The accused are part of the alleged conspiracy in which they "misused" the resources of SIB for political purposes by putting citizens from different walks of life under surveillance, police had said. Those named as accused in the case, along with others, had allegedly unauthorisedly developed profiles of several persons and were accused of monitoring them clandestinely and illegally in SIB and using them in a partisan manner to favour a political party at the behest of some persons.