Hyderabad: Police officers who manned the mass phone tapping operation under the BRS regime were reportedly given additional imported equipment, including what is known as international mobile subscriber identity catchers (IMSI), by the then government representatives.
Some of the BRS representatives colluded with businessmen and used the Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB)’s suspended DSP D. Praneeth Rao to track their targets, tap their phones and extort crores of rupees by blackmailing them. The targets included businessmen, top personalities from Tollywood, real estate mafia and top hawala operators, sources told Deccan Chronicle.
Some of them, faced with threats of exposure of their deals, gave huge amounts of money to the hacking team, a retired police officer said.
Police found that one Ravi Paul, a technical consultant of the SIB at that time, had suggested that intelligence officials import devices from foreign countries to listen in on phone conversations of their targets and track them.
The tapping equipment was reportedly purchased illegally, without taking the mandatory permission from the Centre. Ravi Paul imported tapping devices from Israel in the name of a software company, sources disclosed.
The SIB reportedly paid crores of rupees to Paul who along with then SIB chief T. Prabhakar Rao, the main accused in the tapping operation who is now in the US, reportedly imported the devices from Israel, sources told Deccan Chronicle.
Paul also brought an equipment that could catch conversations within 300 metres. Reportedly on the instructions of Prabhakar Rao, Paul hired an office within a 300-meter radius of then TPCC president A. Revanth Reddy's house and set up the device, sources disclosed.
Sources claimed that the equipment allowed Praneeth Rao and Paul to hear all the conversations in Revanth Reddy's house. Police said they would soon take Paul into custody.
Tracking locations of persons and tapping their phones can only be done with permission from the government and senior officials. However, there are equipment like StingRay available in the market that can intercept calls.
The IMSI catcher, which costs between `20 lakh and `25 lakh is being used by foreign investigation spy agencies, the officer said.
Intelligence agencies install their equipment in their war rooms, which should be kept under CCTV camera surveillance and must have servers and recording devices. In Praneeth Rao’s case, sources said, former SIB chief T. Prabhakar Rao gave him a green signal to misuse equipment that was acquired for national security purposes, a senior police officer said.
