The Himachal phone-tapping case is likely to snowball into a major controversy in the State as only 34 requisite permissions were granted by the home department to the Crime Investigation Department of police for keeping the said phone numbers under surveillance and tapping.
Out of over 1,000 phone numbers which were tapped, 789 phone numbers were tapped till 2011 which include those of criminals, politicians, relative of politicians, civil society people, bureaucrats, journalists and others.
The State Government has seized over dozen hard disks of computers from technical cells of CID and Vigilance Bureau of police and had sent it for forensic examination to State Forensic Science laboratory (FSl) at Junga in Shimla district.
The FSl has submitted a 14-page report after examining the hard disks seized from the technical cell of CID department of police, while another report is likely to be submitted after examining the seized hard disks of Vigilance Bureau’s technical cell.
The Cabinet is to meet on Tuesday and the report is likely to come up for discussions. According to the guidelines of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, phone tapping could be done by the police and intelligence agencies only in the case of threat to national security, State security and criminality.
On the recommendation from police and intelligence agencies, the State Home Secretary or Union Home Secretary grants permission for phone tapping and surveillance.
