Hyderabad, Jan 20 (PTI) Telangana BRS MLA T Harish Rao was on Tuesday questioned by the SIT in the case related to alleged phone tapping during the previous BRS regime.
Harish Rao appeared before the SIT officials at the Jubilee Hills police station here at about 11.30 am and was questioned till 6 pm.
Speaking to reporters after his examination, Harish Rao, nephew of BRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao, called the notice issued to him by SIT “trash”. He said the investigators did not produce any evidence to show his involvement in the phone tapping case.
The notice, Rao said, was issued on Monday, soon after he levelled allegations of corruption in tenders of state-run miner, Singareni Collieries.
According to him, the notice and his examination in the phone tapping case is an attempt by the Congress government to divert attention from its corruption.
Attacking Revanth Reddy, Harish Rao said the CM should order a probe by a sitting Supreme Court or High Court judge into allegations of corruption in tenders of Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL).
He further alleged that a relative of the CM benefited from the “corruption”.
In a letter to Union Coal Minister G Kishan Reddy, Harish Rao sought a CBI probe into “all SCCL tenders and policy decisions taken after 2024” (after Congress came to power).
Earlier, BRS workers, who gathered at the police station, raised slogans in support of Harish Rao.
Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president B Mahesh Kumar Goud dismissed allegations of political harassment made by Harish Rao against the Congress government.
Had the Congress government sought to trouble the opposition party, the BRS leaders would have been in jail in just two days after the government came to power in 2023, Goud said.
People are aware that the phones of bureaucrats, actors, industrialists and even BRS MLAs were tapped during the BRS government, he added.
The SIT probing the phone tapping case has issued a notice to Harish Rao to appear before it here on Tuesday.
The nine-member SIT, comprising senior officers, is headed by Hyderabad Police Commissioner V C Sajjanar.
BRS MLC Naveen Rao had on January 4 appeared before the SIT in connection with the case.
Former Telangana intelligence chief T Prabhakar Rao, the prime accused in the case, was also questioned by the SIT.
A suspended DSP of Telangana Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) was among four police officials who have been arrested by 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.
Those named as accused in the case had allegedly developed profiles of several persons unauthorisedly 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, according to police. PTI SJR SJR ROH
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