Hyderabad: Telangana Special Intelligence Bureau’s former chief T. Prabhakar Rao surrendered before the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the phone tapping case on Friday.
A day after the Supreme Court’s direction, the retired IPS official surrendered before the SIT at the Jubilee Hills Police Station.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the custodial interrogation of Prabhakar Rao for a week.
A bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and R. Mahadevan asked him to surrender for the purpose of custodial interrogation.
The bench directed that there should be no physical torture or hardship during the interrogation. It also allowed Prabhakar Rao to have food from his home as well as medication regularly.
The court passed the orders while hearing Prabhakar Rao’s petition for anticipatory bail.
Earlier, the Supreme Court, while protecting the SIB chief, had asked him to provide the correct ID and password for his iCloud and other cloud backups to the investigating agency.
Appearing for the state, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta had brought to the court’s notice that Rao reset passwords for only two out of five iCloud accounts.
The court was also told that Rao had destroyed the data along with the hard disks and dumped them in a river.
Appearing for Rao, senior advocate Ranjit Kumar said one of the accounts could not be reset because the US mobile number associated with it was deactivated and could not be reactivated.
Ranjit Kumar told the court the data was deleted following official protocols on the order of the Review Committee as the information was sensitive. He said that the minutes of the Review Committee meeting held on December 2, 2023, would establish this.
Prabhakar Rao has been accused of orchestrating the illegal surveillance of several prominent individuals during the BRS rule. He had allegedly constituted a special team in the SIB to tap the phones of those working against the BRS government.
The team allegedly tapped phones of Congress and BJP leaders, businessmen, celebrities, journalists, members of civil society and even judges.
The allegations came to light in March 2024 with the arrest of former Deputy Superintendent of Police D. Praneeth Rao following a complaint from his superior.
Police later also arrested retired Deputy Commissioner of Police P. Radha Kishan Rao and additional superintendents of police N Bhujanga Rao and M. Thirupathanna.
After the defeat of the BRS in the 2023 elections, Prabhakar Rao resigned from his post. He had left for the US just before the case was registered against him.
The Supreme Court, on May 29, 2025, directed authorities to arrange an emergency travel document to enable Prabhakar Rao to return.
As per an undertaking given to the Supreme Court, Prabhakar Rao returned to India on June 8.
(IANS)
