Himachal Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh on Tuesday asked the vigilance department of the State Government to lodge a FIR in the illegal phone tapping case which allegedly took place when the BJP was in power in the State.
On June 15, the Vigilance department had completed the probe and submitted its report to home department recommending registration of criminal case against the police officials of police’s Crime Investigation Department (CID), who “illegally” tapped telephones.
The Chief Minister said that he has asked vigilance department to lodge an FIR and there will be no let-up in the case. “law will take its own course and there will be no let-up in the case,” he said.
Sources said that some top officials of the Government were trying to dilute the case but Chief Minister categorically told them, this cannot be done as lot of things have been reported in the media and hype has been created.
However, the report of vigilance does not name any senior official directly but stated that misuse of official position and machinery was done which resulted in breach of privacy of individuals.
The Chief Minister also said that those responsible for breaching the privacy of the individuals are certainly needed to be brought to book to prevent others from doing the same and misuse of official positions.
The FIR will be lodged in general without any names. Names of accused will be added during the course of investigation. According to the report submitted by Anti-Corruption and Vigilance Bureau (ACVB), some top police officials responsible for over thousand of phone
tapping illegally, without the mandatory permission, have landed in serious trouble and now after the consent of State Government things will be tough for them.
ADGP (vigilance) Prithvi Raj and Deputy Inspector General of police (ACVB) A.P Singh met the Chief Minister regarding the case on Monday. Vigilance bureau had submitted a 12 page report to the State Government on the alleged telephone tapping.
The report had highlighted that provisions of Indian Telegraph and Information Technology Acts had been violated. The report compiled by anti-corruption and vigilance department is based on data retrieved from computers by forensic experts of Forensic Science laboratory (FSl).
According to the report, over 1,300 phones were reportedly tapped or intercepted during the previous BJP regime in the State. Just before the swearing in ceremony of Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, State Government had ordered for seizure of the computers and other snooping devices of the technical cell of CID.
Government then constituted a special team of forensic experts from State forensic laboratory to retrieve data from four each computers seized from offices of CID and anti-corruption and vigilance bureau.
Former DGP ID Bhandari was removed from his post after the phone tapping records surfaced as he headed the CID department, when the mass scale illegal phone tapping took place till December 2012 against the laid norms of union ministry of home affairs.