SIT questions Prabhakar Rao in surveillance case

Prabhakar Rao appeared before the investigating officers at the Jubilee Hills police station in Hyderabad.

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Telangana police on Saturday questioned former Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) chief T Prabhakar Rao, the prime accused in the telephone tapping case during the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi government, people familiar with the matter said.

These officials had earlier deposed before the SIT that they had acted on the instructions of Prabhakar Rao, who was heading the SIB, he said. (HT Archive)

Prabhakar Rao appeared before the investigating officers at the Jubilee Hills police station in Hyderabad.

“The SIT authorities confronted him with the statements given by previously interrogated suspects, including former deputy superintendent of police D Praneeth Rao, retired deputy commissioner of police P Radha Kishan Rao and additional superintendents of police N Bhujanga Rao and M Thirupathanna, to extract concrete answers,” an official privy to the development said.

These officials had earlier deposed before the SIT that they had acted on the instructions of Prabhakar Rao, who was heading the SIB, he said.

This was the third time that the SIT interrogated Prabhakar Rao, who was accused of orchestrating the illegal surveillance of several prominent individuals.

“During the previous rounds of questioning, Prabhakar Rao was uncooperative and adopted a confrontational stance. He evaded key questions by claiming he did not recall events related to the surveillance scandal,” the official quoted above said.

After the general election results, Prabhakar Rao had resigned from his post. Within just four hours of his resignation, several hard disks from the SIB office reportedly went missing.

According to investigation findings, Praneeth Rao destroyed these hard disks and disposed of them in the Musi river.

“When questioned earlier about who had ordered the destruction of these materials, Praneeth Rao confessed that he did so on Prabhakar Rao’s instructions. However, Prabhakar Rao has denied issuing any such orders, and has instead challenged the investigators by asking them to show written directives if they claim he gave any,” the official said.

He said when faced with key questions related to the phone tapping conspiracy, Prabhakar Rao remained silent.

“The SIT is trying to elicit more information based on the data retrieved from the hard disks retrieved from the Musi river,” the official added.