HYDERABAD: In a midnight operation, Andhra Pradesh police served a notice on T-News for airing an audio tape of the purported conversation between AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and TRS nominated MLA Elvis Stephenson on the grounds that it ‘hurt the sentiments of Telugu speaking people’ in both the states.
Assistant Commissioner of Police of AP CID arrived in Hyderabad from Visakhapatnam on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday and served notice to the channel’s CEO Narayana Reddy at T News office in the city.
In its notice, the AP police stated that airing of the audio tape, which purportedly had AP CM Naidu speaking to Stephenson in cash-for vote scam, would create ill will among Telugu-speaking people in the two states.
The AP Police, in their notice, wanted the T-News CEO to reply in three days why legal action should not be taken against the channel for defamatory material that ‘violated public decency’ and ‘disturbed tranquility and maintenance of law and order”.
Following the cash-for-vote case, a large number of cases were filed in AP against Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao. The AP government transferred the phone-tapping case to CID. Following complaints registered in AP, the CID police served the notices to the T-News CEO. T-News was first to air the alleged conversation between Naidu and Stephenson on June 7. Subsequently, two other channels aired the same and they are likely to get notices from AP police. “The Andhra Pradesh police did not even inform them about their action to the local Telangana police,” alleged T-News CEO Narayana Reddy, while terming it an attack on Telangana media by AP Police.
Protesting the attack on freedom of expression, Telangana State journalists staged a dharna at AP Secretariat. They were arrested and taken to police station. Later, some TS journalists staged a dharna at AP DGP office protesting the arrest of journalists.
At a round-table meeting in the evening, several veteran journalists condemned the attitude of AP police and AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu.
