New Delhi: An arm of the state police dedicated to snooping on opposition leaders and party colleagues, officers tasked with preparing a database of financiers of political rivals, and a covert operation to settle disputes in exchange for a mediation fee. These are among the many allegations against the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government in Telangana led by former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao that have come to the fore in what has come to be known as the phone tapping case.
Politicians, social rights activists, judges, journalists and critics were among the 1,200 people allegedly earmarked for surveillance, statements by the accused and other material on record, accessed by ThePrint, suggest.
According to material on record, phones of those allegedly targeted were tapped at different times between 2018 and 2023. This mass surveillance programme was allegedly carried out by now-suspended officers of the Special Operation Team (SOT) instituted by former state Intelligence chief T. Prabhakar Rao under the state police’s Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB).
The phone tapping case started to unravel after the arrest of Dugyala Praneeth Rao, a Deputy Superintendent of Police rank officer, in March this year. Praneeth Rao was arrested on a complaint by his superior, an Assistant Superintendent of Police rank office with the SIB who alleged that he was running an extensive surveillance programme using “17 computers with dedicated internet lines”. These claims were made before an ACP rank officer probing allegations of state-sponsored snooping.
The police complaint against Praneeth Rao also alleged that he resorted to damaging and erasing digital data his team had amassed over the years.
The case, which began with Praneeth Rao named as prime accused, has snowballed into a massive political issue in Telangana, with investigators naming former intelligence chief T. Prabhakar Rao as ‘accused number 1’.
Sources in Hyderabad Police told ThePrint that four of the six accused in the case have been arrested and their recorded statements submitted to the court. With Prabhakar Rao in the US, state police are considering approaching the CBI to get a Red Corner Notice issued against him.
A chargesheet in this case has been filed, sources said, adding that in addition to sections in the FIR, investigators have also invoked Section 166 (disobedience of law by a serving public servant) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in the chargesheet against the accused.
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What is Telangana ‘phone tapping’ case
Hyderabad Police had initially registered an FIR in the case against Praneeth Rao under sections 409, 427, 201 and 120 (B) of the IPC, besides relevant sections of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984 and the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Once they took Praneeth Rao into custody, he led investigators to two ASP rank officers, Nayini Bhujanga Rao and Mekala Thirupathanna. Both were arrested on 23 March and named as accused in the phone-tapping case.
Statements of Bhujanga Rao and Thirupathanna recorded by ACP, Jubilee Hills, and accessed by ThePrint, suggest that, ahead of the 2018 assembly elections in the state, Prabhakar Rao constituted an SOT at the behest of then CM KCR and then state Intelligence chief Naveen Chand.
Bhujanga Rao further claimed that as an ASP at the Intelligence HQ, his day-to-day duties involved collecting political intelligence about opposition parties and leaders and preparing a database of their associates, supporters and financiers. He further alleged that Prabhakar Rao collected this information from him and handed it over to Praneeth Rao, who was head of the SOT allegedly constituted to surveil political rivals of the BRS.
In his statement dated 23 March, Bhujanga Rao also said that Prabhakar Rao — himself a retired IPS officer at the time — roped in another Additional DCP rank officer, P. Radhakishan Rao, as in-charge of Hyderabad City Task Force to maintain a “hold” over the state capital.
Based on subsequent revelations, Telangana Police has booked six, including five serving or retired police officers, in this case. Those booked include Prabhakar Rao, former DCP of Hyderabad City Task Force Radhakishan Rao, suspended DSP Sreenith and Additional SPs Bhujanga Rao and Thirupathanna.
Bhujanga Rao further alleged that Radhakishan Rao played a “key role” in settling civil disputes between business groups in Hyderabad which subsequently benefitted leaders associated with the then ruling BRS.
Additionally, Sravan Kumar, a journalist associated with iNews, was also booked based on Bhujanga Rao’s claim that Kumar had direct access to Praneeth Rao and his team at SIB and shared with them details pertaining to funding of opposition parties including the BJP and the Congress.
Bhujanga Rao also alleged that Sravan Kumar helped Praneeth Rao engage in coordinated ‘trolling’ of critics of the BRS-led state government.
CM Reddy’s brother, BJP leaders ‘surveilled’
According to material on record, the SOT constituted by Prabhakar Rao was allegedly tasked with tracking the movements of key political figures including BJP’s K.V. Ramana Reddy and Kondal Reddy, brother of Chief Minister Revanth Reddy. Both K.V. Ramana Reddy and Revanth Reddy had contested the assembly polls against KCR in Kamareddy last year.
In his statement, Bhujanga Rao also claimed the SOT surveilled nearly all family members of Revanth Reddy, besides BJP MP from Nizamabad Arvind Dharmapuri, former state BJP chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar and BJP MP from Malkajgiri Eatala Rajender. Also allegedly surveilled were BRS leaders R.S. Praveen Kumar, a former IPS officer, Shambipur Raju, and Teegala Krishna Reddy, who was with the BRS until February this year.
Bhujanga Rao told investigators that Prabhakar Rao regularly briefed the SOT and also SIB officers asking them to help BRS amass financial muscle. He cited an example of Saranala Sridhar Rao, MD of Sandhya Convention, who had a dispute with TV news anchor Sambasiva Rao of TV5 group.
According to Bhujanga Rao, Saranala Sridhar Rao was forced to pay Rs 15 crore to settle this dispute. Of the Rs 15 crore, Rs 13 crore allegedly went to BRS through electoral bonds purchased by Saranala Sridhar Rao. The remaining Rs 2 crore, Bhujanga Rao claimed, was routed to Sambasiva Rao.
In his statement, Bhujanga Rao claimed Radhakishan Rao coerced Saranala Sridhar Rao on account of criminal cases filed against the latter in Cyberabad.
Radhakishan Rao’s statement, also accessed by ThePrint, suggested that surveillance of a personal assistant to BJP’s Eatala Rajender enabled the SIB to seize cash from a relative of BJP candidate Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy in the run-up to the Munugode assembly bypoll in 2022. In his statement, Radhakrishan Rao alleged that Eatala Rajender had sent the seized amount (Rs 4.40 crore) to Rajagopal Reddy for election spending.
At the same time, Radhakrishan Rao also claimed that then CM KCR had directed Prabhakar Rao and other senior Intelligence officials to ensure seamless transportation of cash intended for use by the BRS and that Bhujanga Rao himself escorted vehicles carrying cash across Munugode.
Further, the Chief Minister’s Office through the office of the Hyderabad Police Commissioner, sent lists containing names and details of opposition leaders to be surveilled, alleged Radhakrishan Rao. He added that he along with Praneeth Rao helped intercept cash moved by opposition parties.
Raid at Congress office, ‘deal’ with BJP
In his statements, Radhakrishan Rao also referred to two separate instances when the previous government led by KCR allegedly tried to use the SIB to deal with the Opposition — BJP and Congress.
According to him, SIB had intercepted information related to a post criticising KCR in December 2022 and provided the Cyberabad Police with information about Sunil Kanugolu’s office under the Cyberabad Police limits from where officials seized electronic gadgets containing data.
Kanugolu is the Congress party’s in-house campaign strategist who worked extensively with Revanth Reddy and played a crucial role in Congress’s rise to power in the 2023 assembly elections.
Radhakrishan Rao further claimed that KCR wanted to arrest BJP national general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santhosh in order to force a “compromise” with the top leadership of the party to “get rid of the ED case against his daughter MLC Kavitha”.
But this did not happen since Santhosh was granted relief by the high court, which made KCR “very angry”, claimed Radhakrishan Rao.
On 26 October, Cyberabad Police arrested three from the outskirts of Hyderabad, and later, KCR during a press conference released video and audio showing those persons were talking to one “Santhosh”. KCR had then alleged that the BJP was trying to topple his government by poaching MLAs, and the state government even formed an SIT to probe the matter.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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