The Hindu : National : "Phone tapping a rights violation"

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Saturday, Jan 07, 2006

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National

"Phone tapping a rights violation"

Special Correspondent

Set up redress mechanism: Sharad Yadav

NEW DELHI: Janata Dal (United) leader Sharad Yadav on Friday described telephone tapping as a violation of human rights and suggested the setting up of a mechanism to redress such complaints.

These should be referred to the National Human Rights Commission or a separate commission headed by a serving High Court or Supreme Court judge constituted for the purpose, he told a press conference here.

The Centre should consider enacting a law to prevent such incidents in future. Cyber crime should also be brought under the purview of this law. "We have more and more people complaining of phone tapping, including the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, and morphed obscene pictures of well-known women in field of art and culture are also being circulated freely," Mr. Yadav said.

He said the party leader R.K. Hegde resigned as Karnataka Chief Minister in the wake of a phone tapping case. But the present situation was complicated because phone tapping was allegedly done by a private telecom company, over which the government had no control.

The Centre should identify and arrest the person who was reportedly paying Rs. 5 lakhs a week to employees of the company for tapping Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh's telephone.

The telecom sector expanded vastly but the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had no control over it, nor was there a proper mechanism for people to get their grievances redressed, Mr. Yadav said. The same was the case with private detective agencies, which had mushroomed. The government failed to lay down proper guidelines for their functioning, he said.

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