A CPI-M legislator in Kerala Tuesday filed a breach of privilege notice against the state's home minister over the police allegedly tapping phones of the party's legislators.
Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, deputy leader of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) in the assembly, filed the notice against T. Radhakrishnan on complaints filed by E. Kareem and T.V. Rajesh that their mobile phones were being tapped by police teams probing two murder cases.
The first case pertains to the murder of former CPI-M leader T.P. Chandrasekheran near Kozhikode May.
The second case is about the murder of a Muslim League worker in February in Kannur.
In this case, the police had questioned Rajesh, a young CPI-M legislator, for three hours Monday.
After the questioning, Rajesh said the police played a recorded telephone conversation he had with other people, making it clear that they were tapping phones of CPI-M legislators.
Balakrishnan in his notice filed before the speaker of the assembly G. Karthikeyan said both he and Kareem had spoken about the phone tapping issue in their speeches in the assembly July 13.
They said they were told by the home minister that no directions had been given to tap phones.
"On the 23rd of this month, in a reply to an unstarred question raised by Kareem on the same phone tapping issue, the minister replied that no details can be provided to anyone on if telephones are being tapped. This shows that to the same question, the minister has given two contradicting answers," said the notice.
Speaker G. Karthikeyan told reporters Tuesday that so far, he had received two complaints of phone tapping.
"One is from the CPI-M state secretary and the other was a faxed letter from Rajesh received Monday. At the moment, I'm unable to make any comments. As speaker, I'll have to look on what happened in similar complaints made in the past. I will study the matter and decide," Karthikeyan said.