Andhra Pradesh HC seeks reply from state, Centre on probing phone tapping charges

The Andhra Pradesh High Court has issued notices to the state government, Centre and the Telecom service providers to file their responses on the allegations of the phone tapping of some of the judges from the High Court.

The High Court questioned the state, central government and telecom service providers if they had objections to a probe on allegations that phones of judges of the HC were tapped.

Hearing adjourned to August 20

This comes after the Andhra Pradesh High Court on Tuesday took up for hearing a PIL filed by a lawyer, on the alleged tapping of phones of some judges. The HC adjourned the hearing for August 20 after seeking the involved parties to file counters.

A division bench, comprising Chief Justice J K Maheshwari and Justice D Ramesh, also directed the petitioner's lawyer to submit proof of the allegation that a senior IPS official was entrusted with the task of phone tapping.

Additional Advocate General Ponnavolu Sudhakar Reddy, who presented the state governments case, requested the court to make a media house party to the litigation as it came out with the story of the phones of High Court judges allegedly being tapped.

Reddy contended that the PIL was not maintainable as the source of information of the petitioner was not reliable and "seems like a childish play."

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Allegations of phone tapping

On Monday, TDP Chief Chandrababu Naidu had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a probe by a Central agency into the alleged phone tapping by the YSR Congress government using cutting-edge technology. Responding to it, state Director General of Police DG Sawang wrote to the TDP chief stating that the police did not receive any complaint on phone tapping by "private persons and miscreants" using sophisticated technology.

The TDP chief had expressed surprise after receiving response from the state DGP to a letter Naidu wrote to the prime minister.

"I wrote many letters to the DGP on various issues but he never cared to respond. How could he ask for evidence from me when I made allegations about phone tapping," said Naidu during a telephone conference with party leaders.

State Home Minister M Sucharita has called the allegations false. She alleged the allegations as a conspiracy by Chandrababu Naidu to escape the probe into the land scandal in Amaravati.

BJP leader Lanka Dinakar on Monday also demanded the Centre to conduct a probe via central agencies. He wrote to the Home Ministry, urging for a probe into phone tapping of his two numbers.

(With PTI inputs)

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