Senior IPS officer Bhaskar Rao, on Tuesday, filed a protest petition before the CBI Special Court. He appealed to the court to not accept the Closure Report filed by CBI in the phone-tapping case.
A telephonic conversation between Mr. Rao and one Faraz Ahmed, discussing the posting as the Bengaluru Police Commissioner was broadcast on a Kannada news channel, creating a storm in August 2019. A preliminary probe revealed alleged illegal phone tapping by Mr. Kumar’s predecessor Alok Kumar, after which the case was handed over to CBI.
The CBI booked two separate cases, one pertaining to Mr. Rao’s case on how the audio was leaked to the media and another pertaining to alleged illegal phone tapping. It had recently filed a closure report in the case pertaining to Mr. Rao, stating that there was no conclusive evidence on the source of the audio tapes, against which Mr. Rao has now filed a protest petition.
‘Loss of reputation’
Addressing the media, Mr. Rao said that due to the leaked conversation, which was aired by the media, he suffered a loss of reputation and that he was not ready to accept a closure report in the case.
He alleged that the Closure Report filed by the CBI has detailed evidence on how the audio tape was leaked. “Even though some of the expert opinion reports are admittedly awaited by the CBI from CFSL, Hyderabad, the hurried manner of filing the Closure Report does not inspire confidence in the eyes of rule of law and is questionable,” he said.
However, the report, a copy of which is available with The Hindu, details how the line interception of Faraz Ahmed was legally done, with the approval of then Police Commissioner T. Suneel Kumar and the Home Department. The probe finds Alok Kumar to have got the audio tapes of Mr. Rao’s call with the LI target Faraz Ahmed on August 2, 2019, in a pen drive from a police officer with the technical cell of the Central Crime Branch.
‘Lack of evidence’
The CBI report states that the analysis of the audio tapes submitted by the media house, shows the source of the audio tapes were the LI tapes from City Commissionerate. However, with the journalist refusing to reveal her source, the CBI said they could not find any independent conclusive evidence to prove as to how the audio tapes reached the media house and hence sought to close the probe.
