Hyderabad: With the help of a private software company, the suspended SIB DSP G. Praneeth Rao had tapped the mobile phones of 1,200 persons, including Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy’s brother A. Kondal Reddy and several other Congress leaders.
The Hyderabad-based company, Convergence Innovative Labs, was established in 2014, and is owned by Paul Ravi Kumar Boosi and Srivalli Gode is an additional director.
It helped Praneeth Rao to create the profiles of 1,200 people.
According to police, political leaders, whose profiles were created for surveillance, included Congress leaders A. Kondal Reddy, Konda Murali, Konda Surekha, film actor turned politician Maganti Murali Mohan, BJP leader M Raghunandan Rao, state BJP office staff members, who handled cash transactions during elections, BRS leader Nama Nageswar Rao, and V. Ravichandra, a Congress leader from Warangal, who joined the BRS later.
"During the elections, my team monitored several phones of supporters of opposition candidates and those who financially supported them. My team passed on information about the opposition leaders supplying money to their supporters to the police and got such cash seized. The seized cash was shown as hawala money with an intention to avoid criticism by the Election Commission," Praneeth Rao said in his confession.
In his confession, Praneeth Rao had further said that a day after the election results on December 4, 2013, the staff of Convergence Innovative Labs — Srinivas, Ananth and others — came to SIB office. The SIB handed over some servers and hard disks to them. Later, 17 hard disks were removed from computers in the SIB office and were destroyed.
Interestingly, Praneeth Rao had also said that he used at least eight SIM cards for his operations.
TPCC spokesperson Chanagani Dayakar on Wednesday said he requested Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy to intensify the probe in taking a stern action against the BRS leaders and police officers who indulged in such an illegal activity. Former chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao deliberately influenced the police officers to commit offence by getting tap phones of so many individuals.
