Senior Congress leader and former Minister H.K. Patil has demanded that the terms of the phone-tapping probe, which has now been referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), should include the media and the common man, if their phones were tapped too.
In a letter to Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa, Mr. Patil said: “It is not enough to investigate only political leaders and their associates. It should include phone tapping of mediapersons and common man.” Legal action should be taken on the basis of information unearthed through tapping.
The BJP government has ordered a CBI probe into the allegations citing demands by several political parties, including the Congress. While former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, who headed the coalition government, said he was ready for a probe by even an “international agency”, his alliance partner Congress, however, seemed to be a divided house.
In his two-page letter, Mr. Patil said that “ordering an enquiry against these persons will not help complete the process of investigation, unless important sections such as the media and the common man are included.”
The senior Congress leader also said that the investigation “should not be witch-hunting” only to pinpoint the person, who was engaged in phone tapping, but it should book all those persons whose crimes have come to light following information obtained through phone tapping.
“Though the privacy of the person is paramount, at the same time, the crimes unearthed in the investigation are also equally important,” Mr. Patil said.
