Prabhakar remains tight-lipped in police custody

Prabhakar Rao, who surrendered before the special investigation team (SIT) on December 12 following the directions of the Supreme Court, was questioned by joint commissioner Tasveer Iqbal, additional SP K.S. Rao and other senior officials.

The SIT asked Prabhakar to reveal the names of persons on whose instructions he instructed his subordinates to tap the phones. The interrogation team asked him to surrender his iPhone along with technical evidence (data) that he took away.

“How was the public data tapped? Who gave phone tapping orders? What equipment and kits were used for tapping,” the officials asked Prabhakar Rao. They also questioned him about 26 hard disks which he destroyed after the BRS was defeated in the Assembly elections in December 2023.

After his surrender, Prabhakar Rao was sent on a five-day police custody and was interned in a sub-inspector’s room on the second floor of Jubilee Hills ACP office.

Though the SIT officials have already interrogated Rao for 30 hours, sources said he did not disclose anything, and instead he was counter-questioning the investigators. After the completion of the five-day custodial interrogation, the SIT is likely to file a petition for the extension of his police custody for further investigation.

A technical team revealed that Rao had conducted his operation using five iCloud accounts and five Gmail accounts. For analysing the information, the SIT has collected the passwords of four Gmail accounts and two iCloud accounts from Rao.

The SIT has found that Rao was not using his Gmail account currently, though he logged into another iCloud account on a device located in the US. The device is still in the United States and officials are trying to analyse the information on the account, sources disclosed.

The SIT officers have written to Apple and Google to retrieve the deleted data from Rao’s Gmail, and iCloud accounts, the police sources said. If the data could be retrieved, there is a fair chance of securing important information about the phone tapping.

After the completion of custodial interrogation, the sources said the SIT will submit a report to the Supreme Court.

Explaining the daily routine of Rao, the sources said he gets up at 5 am and meditates till 6 am. He has breakfast at 8 am, lunch at 1.30 pm and dinner at 8.30 pm. Food is sent by his family members in tiffin boxes.