NEW DELHI: The Union Home Ministry is set to initiate major penalty proceedings against Additional Commissioner of Police S.Ramakrishnan thus indicting the Delhi Police for illegal telephone tapping of a number of politicians who had fallen out with the erstwhile Congress High Command. The proceedings are on the basis of a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe conducted after Chandra Shekhar had charged the V.P.Singh Government with tapping his telephone at his South Avenue residence in April 1990. While the CBI had exonerated the Intelligence Bureau (IB)-its report stated that it had not obtained any evidence of unauthorized tapping the agency had come across several irregularities committed by the local polices CID wing.
The CBI had launched its investigation following the publication of an interview with Chandra Shekhar in a Bombay weekly in which he had charged that the Government presided over by V.P.Singhhad ordered the bugging of his South Avenue flat. The interview created a furor in Parliament even as the then Speaker Rabi Ray referred the issue to the privileges committee
While the CBI was unable to come across any evidence of Chandra Shekhars phone being tapped it came across several other politicians whose telephones were being monitored by the telephone department at the behest of the Delhi Police.
A note prepared for the Home Minister by Vijay Karan who was the Delhi Police Commissioner and subsequently Director of the CBI had mentioned that there was no malafide involved as far as monitoring by the Special Branch was concerned. The note also mentioned that the telephones of politicians were being monitored at their request because of the threatening or nuisance calls which they had been receiving and about which they had complained.
Some of the politician whose phones were tapped by the Special Branch included Arif Mohammed Khan P.R.Kumaramangalam K.C.Pant and Mohinder Singh Sathi.
The Home Ministry had apparently come to the conclusion that there was a dichotomy between the CBIs investigation and the covering note which had been prepared by the then CBI director Vijay Karan Karans note was based on the fact that the private staff of Khan had complained to the Security wing of the Delhi police that he was receiving threatening calls. It was on the written recommendation of the Security wing that the Special Branch had swung into action and ordered the telephonic surveillance.
Because the requests were received from subscribers themselves no authorization was sought from the Lt Governor as prescribed by procedure. Secondly having dispatched a letter to the telephone department the Special Branch never followed up with orders to cancel the surveillance after the purpose of tracing unwelcome calls was served.
As Arif Mohammed Khan when contracted by The Pioneer explained. My staff had complained to the security police about threatening calls but at no stage we had asked them to put our telephones under surveillance. Secondly even if my telephone call was put under surveillance why was it done for duration which was much longer than was required to trace threatening calls?”
Whatever be the merits of the case it is interesting to note that almost all the politicians who had received threatening calls had either fallen out with the then Congress leadership or were suspected of dubious loyalty by the latter.
If proceedings are initiated against Ramakrisanan an upright officer he would not be the only one to suffer for surveillance mounted against politicians. Recently the Governor wrote to the Chief Minister to transfer IG Y.R.Dhuri for tapping Vice President K.Narayanans phone at the Aj Bhavan during the latter’s visit to Goa on October 16.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 4, 1992
