The
Supreme Court on Thursday granted interim protection from coercive action to
former chief of Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) in Telangana T Prabhakar Rao,
an accused in the phone-tapping case.
A
bench comprising Justices B V Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma directed Rao
to appear before the investigation officer, and said his passport be made
available to him.
Rao,
the key accused in the phone-tapping case, is suspected to be in the US. A Red
Corner Notice was issued against him and his passport was revoked, a police
official said earlier.
The
top court also directed Rao to give an undertaking that he would return to
India within three days after the receipt of his passport.
During the hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta
and senior advocate Sidharth Luthra vehemently opposed the plea filed by Rao
seeking anticipatory bail.
The matter is posted for hearing on August 5.
Rao has moved the top court challenging an order of
the Telangana High Court which dismissed his plea seeking anticipatory bail.
On May 22, a Hyderabad court has issued a
proclamation order against Rao in the phone-tapping case.
According to the order, Rao may be declared a
"proclaimed offender" if he does not appear before the court by June
20.
If a person is declared a proclaimed offender, the
court can order attachment of properties of the accused.
A suspended DSP of SIB was among four police
officials who were arrested by Hyderabad Police since March 2024, for allegedly
erasing the intelligence information from various electronic gadgets as well as
for alleged phone-tapping during the previous BRS regime. They were
subsequently granted bail.
The accused are part of the alleged conspiracy in
which they "misused" the resources of SIB for political purposes by
putting citizens from different walks of life under surveillance, police had
said.
Those named as accused in the case along with others
had allegedly developed profiles of several persons unauthorisedly and were
accused of monitoring them clandestinely and illegally in SIB and using them in
a partisan manner to favour a political party at the behest of some persons and
also conspiracy in destroying the records to cause disappearance of evidence of
their crimes, police earlier said.