Hyderabad:BRS president and former chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will be made prime accused in the phone-tapping case of the BRS government tenure, in which the special investigation team (SIT) probing the matter is all set to file an additional chargesheet any time now.
Party working president K.T. Rama Rao, former minister T, Harish Rao and MLC K. Naveen would also be listed as accused. Official sources told Deccan Chronicle that the top brass of the police had recently held discussions with a senior Supreme Court lawyer in Delhi on making the chargesheet watertight and had decided to proceed with its filing after getting the go-ahead from the legal expert.
Sources said Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy had been briefed about the latest developments and a go-ahead obtained from him. “It will be a combination of scientific evidence and statements of the victims, which form a crucial part in any criminal investigation,” sources in the government said.
The SIT has listed six police officials, including the former Special Intelligence Bureau chief T. Prabhakar Rao, as accused and would now be including political bosses of the BRS regime. However, there was no hope in the present dispensation that coercive steps could be taken against Chandrashekar Rao or the three other leaders, as the courts had earlier given protection to Prabhakar, prime accused so far, mainly on the grounds that he cooperated with the investigating agencies by appearing for questioning.
Sources said the SIT had accused Chandrashekar Rao as the mastermind behind the illegal operations and supported its claim based on the approvals given at the highest levels of government and statements given by some accused as well as victims. With regard to Rama Rao and Naveen, the SIT built its case around the statement by the realtor “Sandhya” Sridhar Rao who claimed to have been coerced to donate `13 crore in the form of electoral bonds. The allegations against Harish Rao pertained to enforcing surveillance against his political rivals.
The BRS has been dismissing the case as one of political vendetta, lacking any evidence of involvement of Chandrashekar Rao and other party leaders. “Top police officials themselves were having divergent views on initiating the probe into the phone-tapping case, leave alone the sustainability of the charges against the political leadership of the BRS regime,” a senior BRS leader said. There was stiff resistance from among the senior police officials when then city police commissioner K. Srinivas Reddy got a case booked into the case. “Now, the latest move (of making Chandrashekar Rao the prime accused) is to divert people’s attention from the government failures, the latest being the mishandling of water utilisation in the wake of El Nino,” he added.
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