Phone tapping: 3 Delhi Police personnel, 3 detectives arrested

Three Delhi Police personnel and as many private detectives have been arrested for allegedly obtaining call detail records of high-profile people including corporates, politicians and businessmen.
According to police, although the six men have been arrested under the same FIR filed for illegally obtaining CDRs of leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, they were not involved in accessing call details of the BJP leader.
Assistant Sub Inspector Gopal, Head Constable Harish and Constable Harish Kumar and detectives Punit Verma, Alok Gupta and Mehraj Saifi were arrested by the Special Cell of Delhi police late last night.
Four persons - Delhi Police constable Arvind Dabas and three private detectives Anurag, Neeraj, and Nitish - had been arrested in this case in February.

"This is the second module who procured CDR of high profile persons. The first module, headed by Dabas was arrested for procuring CDR of Jaitley, in February. Dabas group was involved in procuring CDRs of 30 people while the group arrested last night accessed details of 22 people," said a senior police official.
Police said that details of around 52 people were recovered from the hard disk of the mastermind, Anurag. Police learnt about the second module during interrogation of the first module. The six people were first called for interrogation and then put under arrest last night.

The incident came to light in January causing much political furore with the Opposition accusing the government of tapping Jaitley's phone. According to police, CDRs of 52 numbers, including three belonging to Jaitley, were sought by them by using e-mail id of Assistant Commissioner of Police (Operations) New Delhi district, on January 8, 2013.

The police personnel obtained call detail records of influential persons in this way and handed them over to the private detectives for returns in terms of cash and other benefits.
According to sources, the accused clients of this racket are mostly businessmen and political rivals. Investigators also suspect illegal tapping of phones by the gang using imported equipment.