Rel Infocomm defends itself in Amar's phone-tapping case

Anil Ambani's Reliance Infocomm today refuted in the Supreme Court the allegation of illegal tapping of former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh's phone, claiming it had acted in a bonafide manner.

The company, which was pulled up by the apex court for intercepting Singh's phone on the basis of an authorisation letter full of errors, said there was no reason to believe that the letter sent was forged as similar errors were there in earlier letters which were genuine.

Reliance Infocomm, which filed an affidavit in this regard, said a service provider is bound to act immediately on the request and there are chances of serious threat of terrorist attack if non-compliance are on grounds of spelling errors.

The telecom company, which filed the affidavit before a bench of justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly, said "it acted in a bonafide manner" on a direction given by the Joint Commissioner of Delhi Police and Home Secretary of NCT government on the authorisation letters which has been alleged to be forged.

Under intense scrutiny of the apex court, Reliance Infocomm today brought noted criminal lawyer Ram Jethmalani to defend itself.

The company's response came after the court, in the earlier hearing, slammed it for tapping Singh's phone on the basis of authorisation letter which was apparently looking forged as there were gross errors in the letter on which the interception was done.

Responding to apex court's query, the company said there was no reason to believe that the letter sent to it by the authorities was forged as similar errors were there in earlier letters which were genuine.

"I am producing before this court some specimen documents which show that there are spelling and other mistakes in their letters sent to the company," it said while pointing out errors in various letters written to it on the basis of which phone calls of various persons were intercepted in past.

"When a request for interception is received, the service provider is duty bound to comply with the request immediately and there was no provision under which it could send back the request by pointing out such requests.

"I submit that postponing compliance on the ground of inconsequential mistakes like spelling errors may conceivably lead to a serious terrorist attack and the blame may fall on us," the company said.