Snooping row: Manish Tewari asks why no PSO was provided to woman

Launching a fresh attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the Gujarat snooping row, Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari on Monday asked why no personnel security officers (PSOs) were provided if the woman in question was being protected at her father's behest.

"Would BJP mind elaborating on whether any threat assessment was carried out? Was it a legal and dignified way?," he asked.

"If the BJP's explanation is to be believed about providing security to a common woman, then it does not answer the raising questions. Was any threat assessment carried out?

The legal and dignified way to provide security is personal guarding with their knowledge. They need to come clean on this," Tewari said.

Tewari earlier said that state-sponsored stalking raises serious questions on the violation of civil liberty.

"State sponsored stalking is synonyms with the state intruding into your bedroom. It raises very serious questions about infringement of civil liberty; Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees the right to privacy," he said.

"I would like to ask the mothers, the sisters and the daughters of this country that would you feel safe and secure in a state, where the agents of the state stalk you. I would like to ask the men of this country, would you feel secure if you were to know that the state is misusing and abusing its authority in order to stalk your wives, your sisters and your daughters," he added.

On Friday, two websites, played what they said were taped telephone conversations between Shah when he was Gujarat's minister of state for home and a senior police officer, GL Singhal.

On the tapes, a man, allegedly Amit Shah tells another, allegedly Singhal, to monitor the movements of the woman in Ahmedabad in Gujarat.

The voice purported to be that of Shah says the surveillance is being done at the best of "Saheb" or master. The websites claim that these are recordings made by Singhal, which he submitted to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) while being questioned in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case.

Singhal was arrested by the CBI in February this year in connection with the 2004 Ishrat Jahan fake encounter and was recently released on bail. He was then posted as SP, ATS in Gujarat.