Security agencies have been asked to go into details of the illegal “phone-tapping” saga that had been unleashed during the internal feud between senior IPS officers and CBI colleagues Alok Verma and Rakesh Asthana.
Sources told The Sunday Guardian that mobile and landline phones of CBI officials, top officials from other organisations and private individuals, including political entities, were “evidently” tapped by the CBI officials without taking permission from the Home Secretary.
“The calls of officials and individuals were being tapped and the required permission, needed before tapping phones, was not taken in specific cases,” an official source said. According to the source, a closer scrutiny of the tapping related documents will reveal that to hide the identity of the person whose number was being tapped, the IMEI number of the handset he was using was wrongly attributed to a mobile number of another individual.
CBI sources, who are or were a part of the agency’s Special Unit which is tasked with surveillance, told this newspaper that the mobile conversations of CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana and other individuals too were taped by agency officials without taking any permission. The individuals whose phone conversations were taped include that of alleged middleman Manoj Prasad, who is under arrest for his role in facilitating a deal between a Hyderabad-based businessman and top CBI officials so that the agency would not pursue him. Prasad was arrested by the agency on 16 October after he arrived in Delhi from Dubai. Officials sources said that this instance of tapping was carried out at 2 pm on 14 October by two CBI officials—one sub-inspector level and another inspector level officer. These two officers, however, could not have carried out the tapping on their own unless they were asked to do by their superiors, sources said. The Special Unit at that time was led by CBI DIG Anish Prasad, who was on 24 October shifted to another department within the agency when the government issued a midnight order divesting Verma and Asthana of their powers. Emails sent to Prasad seeking his response on the matter did not elicit any response.
Manish Kumar Sinha, who is a Deputy Inspector-General with the anti-corruption branch of the agency, had last week filed a petition in the Supreme Court against his 24 October “arbitrary transfer” from Delhi.
Sinha has mentioned in the petition that the CBI raids conducted on 20 October at the residence and office of CBI DySP Devender Kumar were based on certain inputs provided by the Special Unit based on “legal interception”.
In his application, Sinha has demanded a court-monitored probe by a special investigation team into the corruption charges against Asthana. Sinha was one of the officers transferred on 24 October, within hours of Centre asking Verma and Asthana to proceed on leave until further orders.