Hyderabad: Congress MLA Yennam Srinivas Reddy dared BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao to take a lie detector test if he had nothing to do with the phone tapping case. He also questioned former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao's silence on the issue, which had happened during his rule.
Meanwhile, Reddy urged the state government to constitute an SIT (special investigation team) probe into the entire criminal fraud and bring the culprits to book.
Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, Reddy took exception to Rama Rao’s charge that Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy had scripted the phone tapping episode to divert people's attention away from the failures of the Congress government at a time when Lok Sabha elections were round the corner.
He alleged that Chandrashekar Rao and Rama Rao were behind the issue and should face consequences like a jail sentence. He alleged that former intelligence chief T. Prabhakar Rao had tapped the phones of opposition leaders and businessmen at the behest of Chandrashekar Rao.
"BRS government has set up private phone tapping universities in the last 10 years. Shravan Rao and Naveen Rao extorted money from politicians, businessmen and realtors by threatening to leak their conversations obtained through phone tapping. Only a thorough probe by SIT will unearth the actual culprits," Reddy said.
Stating that many had fallen victims to phone tapping in the state, he urged each of them to come forward and lodge complaints with the police. He added that he had himself lodged a complaint with the DGP.
The Congress leader urged the police department to set up a centre in every district to receive complaints pertaining to phone tapping, which is a serious crime under the Indian Telegraph Act.
He wondered how and why the BJP government at the Centre had remained silent on the widespread scam in Telangana.
