New Delhi, March 10 The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted anticipatory bail to former Telangana Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) chief T Prabhakar Rao, who is an accused in a phone tapping case.
A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and R Mahadevan granted the relief to the former IPS officer.
"…We dispose of the appeal by making the interim protection absolute, which was granted to the accused," the bench said.
On December 19 last year, the apex court had extended the police custody of Rao till December 25. The court had said Rao would be released after interrogation on December 26 and no coercive action be taken against him till it heard the case on the next date of hearing.
On January 16 this year, the court said it will hear the matter on March 10 and extended the interim protection to Rao till then.
During the proceedings on Tuesday, senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, appearing for Telangana, said the investigation was almost complete, and that an additional chargesheet will be filed against the former IPS officer in the coming days.
Rao said that he had cooperated with the investigation and complied with the court’s orders.
He had moved the top court challenging an order of the Telangana High Court, which dismissed his plea seeking anticipatory bail.
On May 22, a Hyderabad court issued a proclamation order against Rao in the phone-tapping case.
A suspended DSP of SIB was among four police officials who were arrested by the Hyderabad Police since March 2024, for allegedly erasing intelligence information from various electronic gadgets as well as for alleged phone-tapping during the previous BRS regime. They were subsequently granted bail.
The accused are part of the alleged conspiracy in which they "misused" the resources of SIB for political purposes by putting citizens from different walks of life under surveillance, the police had said.
Those named as accused in the case and others had allegedly developed profiles of several persons without authorisation and were accused of monitoring them secretly and illegally and using them in a partisan manner to favour a political party at the behest of some persons.
They are also accused of a conspiracy to destroy records and evidence of their crimes, according to the police.