Tollywood on the edge!

From their WhatsApp chats, even the deleted ones, images, phone call records to flirty conversations suggesting hush-hush affairs, a variety of favours and financial transactions — police officials accused in the massive phone-tapping scandal, reportedly had access to all of them.

Sources associated with the investigation disclosed that the phones of some of the actors were being actively monitored around the time the sensational drug bust involving the industry’s bigwigs gained spotlight in 2017.

It was not as if Tollywood actors were not being monitored prior to that. They were, but only a few of them, particularly those who had political leanings or supported one party. The drug bust led the sleuths to step up surveillance manifolds even as more and more from the industry, suspected of wrongdoing, came onto the radar of the intelligence wing.

Motives

The motives behind the phone monitoring varied, sources say. “What the top government functionaries needed to know about the goings-on in Tollywood was made known to them, while the remaining was for the consumption of fellow IPS officers, who were then in key posts,” sources maintained.

Simultaneously, the accused police officials are alleged to have extorted money from some actors by blackmailing them based on their chats and calls. “The actors, too, were not holy cows. To get themselves into the good books of some powerful people, they extended all sorts of favours. It was a sort of quid pro quo where they made huge amounts of money as well,” they said.

Gadgets & Tools

All that they needed to do was feed the phone numbers into the system, and they could hear the conversations all day long, for months and years. In case the actors switched over to new numbers, some even having multiple numbers, the sleuths had no problem accessing them simultaneously.

The accused police officials used state-of-the-art forensic tools to retrieve the deleted WhatsApp chats, phone call records, images, and other data on the phones of the actors. While the actors were under the impression that they “were safe” by switching over to new numbers, that clearly was not the case.

“They (accused officials) gathered a mine of information as far as Tollywood is concerned. There are many angles to this whole episode, and we are trying to get to the bottom of that,” the official said.

Israel & TS

Sources said that the Telangana state police, under the BRS rule, spent mind boggling sums of money to purchase the latest equipment for monitoring phones and forensic tools to effectively snoop upon the opposition leaders and Tollywood celebs.

The latest gadgets, costing into crores of rupees, were purchased at different intervals from various companies in Israel, one of the largest providers of surveillance and monitoring equipment to the world.