A serious issue that was flying under the radar in Telangana till recently swung to the centre of the political battlefield this week. About a fortnight ago, a deputy superintendent of police at the state’s Special Intelligence Branch (SIB) was arrested for allegedly tapping the phones of a large number of people. By some accounts, he was eavesdropping on around 1,200 people from different walks of life including politics.
On Tuesday, former minister K T Rama Rao of the BRS, during whose time in power the phone-taps are said to have been ordered, urged current Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy to order a probe, even as several Congress and BJP leaders claimed their phones had been tapped.
The remand report of D Praneeth Rao, the accused DSP who had been at the SIB since 2016, reads like the script of a riveting intelligence drama. He apparently had two rooms equipped with 17 computers exclusively for his use, with servers located in different places. Following the change of guard in the state, he allegedly destroyed the hard drives and threw away the pieces in Anantagiri forest.
Former SIB chief T Prabhakhar Rao, who was retained in the position as officer on special duty even after his retirement in 2020, has now been named the prime accused; he is reported to be in the US for medical treatment. Additional superintendents N Bhujanga Rao and M Thirupatanna, who were arrested on Saturday, have also been named among the accused.
Was it taken for granted that an SIB official could tap phones with impunity even without proper authorisation from the home ministry? If this was the case, and opposition leaders were not spared, what about the common man? The Supreme Court has made it clear in different verdicts that the right to privacy is a fundamental right. The top court ruled in the Puttaswamy case that the right to privacy is an intrinsic part of the Constitution’s Article 21.
Though there are restrictions, any interference or violation must be sanctioned by law. It is also difficult to understand how the shenanigans in Telangana fall under the categories defined in Section 5 of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885. One possible way of preventing unwarranted wire-tapping by agencies is to introduce legislative oversight. This way, the powers that be will at least think twice before misusing the agencies for political gain.