Snoop case: Accused had tapped BRS leaders’ phones during horse-trading in resort

Hyderabad: The special police team probing the snooping case came up with sensational facts that D. Praneeth Rao, former DSP SIB, under the directions of former SIB chief T. Prabhakar Rao had tapped the phones of even former BRS MLAs that led to the raid on horse-trading prior to the Assembly elections.

According information passed on by Praneeth Rao, a senior police officer on October 26, 2023 acted as a SHO and along with additional forces raided a farm house on the city outskirts where Ramchandra Bharathi, alias Satish Sharma, Nandu Kumar and Simhayahi Swami were reportedly luring four BRS MLAs-Pilot Rohith Reddy, B. Harshavardhan Reddy, Rega Kantha Rao and Guvvala Balaraju to join the BJP.

Meanwhile, P. Radha Kishan Rao, who has been taken into seven-day police custody said that on December 4 he and Praneeth destroyed the profiles of over 100 political leaders, businessmen, and others when they learnt that Congress was forming the government, police sources disclosed.

In his confession, Radha Kishan disclosed that their team used a private chartered flight that belonged to a politician and flew to Delhi and Kerala to get mediators B.L. Santosh, Tushar Vellapally, Jaggu Swamy.

The special teams will cross check Radha Kishan’s statement with Prabhakar, who was also reportedly on board that flight.

However, there are many questions about the role of Radha Kishan, who reportedly hatched plans to extort money and together with Praneeth created over 100 profiles of targets, police sources said.

Radha Kishan, using phone tapping as a weapon, generated crores of rupees as funds to a political party.

The decision of the accused to destroy equipment, data, profiles, SIM cards and other storage from all the five war rooms has made it difficult for the present investigation teams as some of the important data profiles are completely destroyed, police sources said.