Detractors of Arun Jaitley within the BJP and a controversial former cricket administrator could have been behind the operation to procure Jaitley’s call details, suspect investigators.

A senior Delhi police official said, “The former cricket administrator is one of the suspects in the operation... Some leads have emerged.” But he did not wish to identify the suspect so as not to jeopardise further investigation.

It is suspected that around a dozen politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats were also targeted in the operation. One such was Vivek Nagpal of Shonkh Technologies, a company dealing in smart cards.

The Delhi Police have arrested four persons in connection with the case — Anurag Singh, who runs a private detective agency, his associates Neeraj Nayyar and Nitish and constable Arvind Dabas of the Delhi Police. 

On Friday, the police custody of the three detectives was extended by three days by a court. Anurag was the main accused in the Amar Singh phone tapping case, and it is being ascertained how he and the former cricket administrator were connected in this case, said a source.

Dabas, who had access to the official email account of ACP (operations) in the New Delhi district unit of police, sent an email from it to the service provider seeking call details of Jaitley on January 8. The service provider got suspicious and informed the Delhi police.

Investigators say that last year also, there were three attempts to obtain Jaitley’s call records and all three were successful. 

According to information available with HT, the gang also tried to get subscriber details (names and addresses of users) of at least five mobile numbers.