New Delhi: On urging of the Karnataka government, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered an FIR in the ‘illegal’ phone-tapping of politicians in the state last August, thus taking over the case. According to Deccan Herald, a case has been registered against unknown public servants and private persons under the Information Technology Act and the Indian Telegraph Act.
The state government had urged for an independent probe into the case, which led the Centre to issue a notification on the same. A CBI team has thus been sent to get the relevant documents from the state police and will probe “illegal, unauthorised and unwanted interceptions of telephones of political leaders belonging to the ruling party and opposition parties as well as their associates, relatives and also of the government servants”.
During the previous Congress regime in Karnataka, it was alleged that phones of several opposition leaders, ruling party leaders, their relatives as well as those of public servants were illegally tapped between August 2018-2019. It was alleged that former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy ordered this illegal tapping when his own government was facing a political crisis – which ended in his recent ouster.
According to The Hindu, the CBI FIR mentions the state was also apprehensive that crucial and personal information of senior political leaders may have been leaked due to the alleged unauthorised phone-tapping.
The case came into the limelight recently after an audio recording of a telephone conversation was leaked to the media. It was purportedly between one Faraz Ahmed and Bengaluru police commissioner Bhaskar Rao in which the latter is lobbying for the commissioner’s post.