‘No evidence on eavesdropping on actors’ phones in telephone tapping case’

Sources said that there is no evidence to prove that eavesdropping on mobile phones of some film actors of Tollywood has been found so far in the ongoing investigation into the sensational telephone tapping case.

While unconfirmed reports are doing rounds through different media platforms ‘conclusively stating that mobile phones of renowned and young film heroines had been tapped’, the Hyderabad police did not stumble upon any such clinching material to confirm the same. Surely, the team of investigators discovered that mobile phones of persons from different walks of life had been tapped from 2022 onwards during the second stint of BRS government from 2018 to 2023.

“Eavesdropping on phones of targeted persons could have been done before 2022 also. But the evidence to suggest or prove that it happened is only from 2022,” a senior police officer seeking anonymity and overseeing the probe said. The complaint about tapping of phones was first lodged by an Additional Superintendent of Police with Special Intelligence Branch (SIB) — a special wing of Telangana police gathering intelligence about movement and modules of Left Wing Extremism — on March 10, 2024.

The case was registered by Punjagutta police of West zone of Hyderabad. As the probe progressed under the supervision of top officials, it came to the fore that a group of police officials allegedly led by the then SIB chief T. Prabhakar Rao eavesdropped on mobile phones of ‘influential individuals’. Four police officers, including a retired one, were arrested while Mr. Rao (who flew to USA after the telephone tapping case was registered) returned to Hyderabad after securing an order from the Supreme Court.

As the investigation unravelled how the telephone tapping was carried out, unconfirmed reports started surfacing in social and digital media linking BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao’s name to the case. A regional news channel recently telecast stories stating that investigators found evidence that KTR had overheard conversations of some female film stars as telephone tapping was done indiscriminately in Telangana.

These stories triggered protests by BRS cadre resulting in attacks on the TV channel office. Officials overseeing the investigation said the case has two important parts. The first part is related to Call Data Records of nearly 4,000 mobile phone numbers secured by the Special Operations Team (SOT) created allegedly by Mr. Rao for the purpose of telephone tapping. No conversations of these 4,000 members were tapped.

“But an analysis of whom they were speaking with and who were calling them was analysed. This included numbers of journalists, former MLAs and MPs. Even this was illegal,” the officer associated with the investigation said. The second part is the eavesdropping of slightly over 600 persons’ conversations. This happened only during a fortnight in November ahead of Telangana Assembly polls in 2023.

“No film heroine’s or film star’s number is either in those 4,000 (CDR) or in the 600-odd numbers,” the officer said. The officer, however, declined to comment as to why and on what basis reports of political leaders intruding into lives of film stars by tapping their mobile phones were being circulated.