'State-sponsored stalking raises questions on civil liberty violation': Tewari on Amit Shah snooping case

Expressing concern over the allegations that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's close aide Amit Shah misused his powers and police machinery to monitor the movement of a young woman in 2009, Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari on Sunday 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 told media here today.

"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.

He also said that if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) believed that this entire episode is untrue, they should have the courage of conviction to sue those people in the court of law.

"What is surprising is the very sanctimonious and self serving explanations offered by the BJP, and if they do believe that all this is completely untrue, then they should have the courage of conviction of suing those people in the court of law, who have made this entire alleged episode public?" he questioned.

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.