Telangana Cong chief Mahesh Goud deposes before police in phone-tapping case

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president B Mahesh Kumar Goud on Tuesday testified before police as a witness in the case relating to alleged illegal phone tapping during the previous BRS regime.

Speaking to reporters after his deposition, Goud condemned the illegal phone tapping during the BRS government and said all those involved should be held accountable.

He said he shared information with the investigators following a request from them.

He accused the previous BRS regime of using phone-tapping for "political gain".

Goud recalled that in 2021, he and other Congress leaders had complained to the then Chief Secretary about their suspicion of being under surveillance.

The Congress leader claimed that the phones of "thousands of Congress leaders" were illegally tapped in violation of the Telegraph Act, 1885.

Goud suggested that the Congress party's defeat in the Assembly elections in 2018 could be attributed to the phone tapping as it allowed their "movement to be tracked".

The truth is now emerging regarding the tapping of phones of then PCC president Revanth Reddy and other leaders, he claimed.

Goud urged the state government to punish those involved in phone tapping so that it acts as a deterrent.

He claimed that hard discs containing data related to phone-tapping were destroyed and a probe is being conducted on the available "limited data".

The ACP of Jubilee Hills has requested Goud's deposition in the case, Congress sources said on Monday.

Authorities are currently questioning the former Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) chief of Telangana, T Prabhakar Rao, the prime accused, in the alleged phone-tapping case.

Prabhakar Rao has been accused of forming a "Special Operations Team" under a suspended DSP within the SIB for carrying out certain specific tasks related to political surveillance to benefit the then ruling political party and its leaders.

The suspended DSP of the SIB was among the four police officials arrested by the Hyderabad police since March 2024 for allegedly erasing intelligence information from various electronic gadgets as well as for phone-tapping during the BRS regime.

They were subsequently granted bail.

Those named as accused in the case, along with others, had allegedly developed profiles of several people in an unauthorised manner and were accused of monitoring them clandestinely and illegally in the SIB and using them in a partisan manner to favour a political party at the behest of some people.

They were also involved in a conspiracy to destroy records to cause disappearance of evidence of their crime, police had said.