Policeman held for trying to access call details of Jaitley

A Delhi Police constable has been arrested for allegedly making an unauthorised attempt to access the Call Details Record (CDR) of the mobile phone of Arun Jaitley, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, this past month.

Thirty-two-year-old Arvind Dabas, who is posted at the Parliament police station, was arrested by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police on Thursday.

He has been booked under Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 66A of the Information Technology Act.

The case pertains to the sending of an illegal request by Mr. Dabas on January 8 from the official email account of an Assistant Commissioner of Police to a mobile service provider seeking the call details of Mr. Jaitley. However, the attempt was aborted as the nodal officer of the telecom company called up the senior police officer concerned to cross-check the request.

Mr. Dabas has purportedly told the police during interrogation that he wanted the records for personal reasons.

Mr. Dabas revealed that he was in contact with two Dehra Dun-based Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders to set up a real estate business in Uttarakhand. One of the two leaders apparently assured Mr. Dabas that he would use his connections with Mr. Jaitley to help him in setting up the business. The constable then sent the email seeking call details of Mr. Jaitley to know whether the claims of the BJP leader of knowing Mr. Jaitley were correct. Special Cell sleuths may call the two Dehra Dun-based BJP leaders, whose name have not been revealed, for interrogation.

The police are also considering evoking Section 201 (disappearance of evidence) of the IPC in the case since the constable tried to destroy the evidence by deleting the mail from the “sent folder” and ‘trash”.

Meanwhile, the BJP on Saturday said it would not take things “lying down” and asked Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde to explain who ordered the collection of the call details.

BJP president Rajnath Singh termed the issue “serious” and demanded that all those involved in the incident be brought to book.

BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said the party condemned the unauthorised surveillance on its leader.