Himachal phone tapping: Vigilance department registers FIR

Vigilance and Anti-corruption Bureau of Himachal Pradesh Police today registered an FIR against unknown persons in the case of phone tapping during the previous BJP regime.
The FIR has been registered under Section 26 of Indian Telegraph Act and relevant sections of Information Technology Act for illegal tapping and violation of provisions of IT Act, sources in Vigilance Bureau said.
The state Vigilance and Anti-corruption Bureau had completed the probe in phone tapping case on June 15 and recommended registration of FIR against the erring officials and submitted the report to the government.
The FIR was registered after the enquiry report was discussed and perused by the Chief Minister V B Singh, who directed that appropriate action be taken in specific cases and "no person guilty of illegal tapping and intrusion into privacy of individual should be spared".

The vigilance enquiry report had also suggested registration of FIR for further investigation into the matter.
After the FIR, normal procedure of investigation in criminal case would be followed and cases against specific persons would be registered on the basis of findings of investigations.

Highly placed sources in the government said that as per the inquiry report, Indian Telegraph Act and Information Technology Act have been violated, phones were tapped illegally without authorisation from competent authority, permission for tapping the phones of some people had been taken repeatedly on flimsy grounds.
The Vigilance and Anti-corruption Bureau did not scan the audio files as the number of files was as high as 70,000 and it would have taken months and years to scan the same.

Sources said that politicians, bureaucrats and some journalists were among the people whose phones had been tapped during the previous BJP regime.
The Vigilance inquiry into the alleged phone tapping has prima facie established that telephones of top politicians, bureaucrats, cops, realtors and journalists were intercepted in violation of the Indian Telegraph Act and Information Technology Act.
The hard discs of CID and Vigilance computers were seized after the Congress came to power on December 25 last year and a team of forensic experts from the state Forensic science laboratory scanned the hard discs and inquiry was entrusted to Vigilance Bureau on the basis of the findings in the report.