Phone tapping case: SIT serves notice to BRS leader Harish Rao for appearance on Jan 20

The Telangana Police SIT probing the alleged phone tapping during the previous BRS regime has issued a notice to former Minister T Harish Rao to appear before it here on January 20, police sources said on Monday.

Harish Rao is nephew of BRS President K Chandrasekhar Rao.

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

Responding to the notice issued to Harish Rao, BRS Working President K T Rama Rao accused the Congress government of political vendetta.

Referring to media reports alleging possible corruption in the state-owned coal mining firm, Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) tenders, Rama Rao alleged that ''CM A Revanth Reddy, rattled by the exposure of the coal scam involving his brother-in-law has resorted to attention diversion politics'' by issuing notice to Harish Rao.

The Supreme Court had stated that there was no substance in the phone-tapping case and that it was nothing but an act of political vendetta, Rama Rao claimed.

BRS MLC Naveen Rao on January 4 had 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 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 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.

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