Hoping for red corner notice on SIB ex-chief: Govt to HC

Hyderabad: The state govt said it is expecting Interpol to soon issue a red corner notice against Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) former chief T Prabhakar Rao in the sensitive phone tapping case.
Public prosecutor Palle Nageswara Rao on Saturday informed the Telangana high court that the state govt had requested CBI, nodal officer for Interpol, to help it nab the absconding Prabhakar Rao, who is accused number one in the illegal phone tapping case.He said CBI had done its job and that the govt is now hoping Interpol to step in.
The state prosecutor said this before the court presided over by Justice Juvvadi Sridevi, who took up the bail plea filed by Mekala Thirupathanna, former additional SP, who is accused number 4 in the case and remanded in judicial custody.
Opposing his bail plea, Nageswara Rao explained to the court that Prabhakar Rao and five others, including Thirupathanna, played havoc with the lives of a large number of people through illegal interception of phones to help then governing party BRS.
Key material destroyed
"The moment they understood that BRS lost power, two of them left the country and are evading law. The remaining accused have destroyed the hard discs and key material. The telephone data of Airtel subscribers whose phones were tapped, was completely destroyed. When we tried to gather info in bits and pieces from the remaining phone numbers belonging to BSNL, Jio and Vodafone, to our shock we realised that as many as 4,500 phones were tapped from these non-Airtel phones between Nov 15-30, 2023, during the assembly poll season," the PP said.
He told the court that these details pertain to only 20% phones whereas 80% phones tapped belong to Airtel network, whose details they could not retrieve due to destruction of gadgets by the accused.
Phones of 190 Congress
leaders tapped
The Special Intelligence team operated in a no-holds-barred manner, disregarding all norms related to phone interception and illegally tapped phones of as many 190 Congress leaders, Nageswara Rao said, while informing the court that the team's target was then opposition leader and chief minister A Revanth Reddy, members of his family and his associates.
"All the information pertaining to Revanth was recovered from the phones of Thirupathanna. We could retrieve as much as 340 GB of information belonging to various individuals from this accused," the PP said. "BJP leader Eatela Rajender's phone was also tapped. Even the phones of his gunman and cameraman were not spared," he said.
Thirupathanna's counsel V Surender said the state govt has already filed a chargesheet in the case.
"He was only following the orders from his superiors," Surender said.