Metro India News | Hyderabad 

Union Minister of State for Home, Bandi Sanjay Kumar, has been served notice by the SIT to record his statement as a witness in a case related to alleged illegal phone tapping during the previous BRS regime, police said on Thursday.

In the notice, the Special Investigation Team probing the case sought Kumar's time for recording his statement and he agreed to appear before the police on July 24, they said. The union minister suggested to the investigators meet him at the Lake View Government Guest House in the city.

Referring to allegations that the phones of judges were also tapped, Kumar last month said it is the responsibility of the state government to hand over the probe to the CBI. Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy had sought a central agency investigation into the case when he was in opposition, he had said.

Authorities are currently questioning former Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) chief of Telangana, T Prabhakar Rao, the prime accused, in the case. Rao has been accused of forming a "Special Operations Team" under a suspended DSP within the SIB for carrying out certain specific tasks related to political surveillance to benefit the then ruling political party and its leaders.

The suspended DSP of the SIB was among the four police officials arrested by the Hyderabad police in March 2024 for allegedly erasing intelligence information from various electronic gadgets, as well as for phone-tapping during the BRS regime. They were subsequently granted bail.

Those named as accused in the case, along with others, had allegedly developed profiles of several people in an unauthorised manner and were accused of monitoring them clandestinely and illegally in the SIB and using them in a partisan manner to favour a political party at the behest of some people.