SC slams govt, RCom over Amar phone tapping

The Supreme Court today slammed the government for not cancelling the licence of Reliance Infocomm for illegally tapping the telephone of politician Amar Singh on the basis of forged orders.

"Why didn't you cancel the licence of the service provider. It's  gross negligence. Either service provider was doing deliberately or because of its incompetence on the basis of a letter full of errors.

"There were gross errors in the letter on which the interception was done. The government should have cancelled the licence of the service provider per se," a Bench comprising Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly said.

Reliance Infocomm company has been with the group headed by Anil Ambani after the split between the Ambani brothers in July, 2005.

"That was in 2005, now it is 2011 and service provider has been allowed to continue with its business. The government has not taken any action so far. It is a serious matter and why action has not been taken against the service provider," the Bench said.

The remarks of the bench came as the Reliance Infocomm had intercepted Singh's telephone between October 22 and December 21, 2005 on the basis of two letters of the "competent authority"  which had several grammatical errors and subsequently it was found that the signatures of officers were forged.

"The letters were coming from the senior police officer and Home Secretary, the senior IAS officer. The whole content should have been examined for public safety. It was such a serious matter. This type of order has been acted upon by the service provider. The citizen of this country has no safety. They are subjected to interception by unscrupulous service provider," the Bench said.