Accused Officers Involved in Phone Tapping Were Leading Lavish Lives in Villas
Hyderabad: In the first concrete evidence that BRS-regime officials had benefited from tapping phones, police on Tuesday located buildings that the former SIB personnel had acquired by reportedly using money earned from the illegal operation.
Sources said suspended DSP T. Praneeth Rao allegedly went rogue and formed his own private gang to identify businessmen and hawala operators, tapped their phones and extort money from them, even as he continued the operation authorised by the main accused T. Prabhakar Rao, former Special Investigation Bureau (SIB) chief, who is in the US.
The officers in the illegal tapping operation own villas in posh localities, expensive cars, imported bikes and land on the city outskirts, all purchased from extortion settlements after blackmailing targets, sources said.
Praneeth Rao as also additional DSP rank officials N. Bhujanga Rao and Thirupatanna, all of them under arrest, reportedly colluded with private gangs, collected information on top jewellers and extorted them.
Sources said the jewellers import gold bricks from international markets. The then SIB officials got wind of the arrival of gold consignments by snooping on jewellers’ phones.
A jeweller said they used to get threatening calls from unknown numbers, and the callers would threaten them that they would halt the consignments at the Customs. The jewellers would then have to spend a lot of time, money and effort in submitting additional documents to get the gold cleared.
“Our community does not want to purchase trouble. Instead we pay and get rid of any trouble,” he said, since the gold consignments are worth crores of rupees.
On Tuesday, the police filed a petition in the Nampally court seeking custody of Praneeth Rao, Bhujanga Rao and Thirupatanna. The court adjourned the hearing for Wednesday.
