Reliance Infocomm under lens for security check

Security agencies are scrutinising purported internal communication between top Reliance Infocomm executives to check whether national security was impacted in re-routing of international calls as local ones by the company.

Reliance Infocomm had been fined Rs 150 crore in March by the department of telecom for re-routing calls, an action upheld by the telecom dispute settlement appellate tribunal (TDSAT), although the company has denied any wrongdoing.

Well-placed sources said the agencies had collected over a hundred documents, including more than two dozen e-mails, purportedly exchanged between top executives of Reliance Infocomm about the operations of the home country direct service under which international calls were re-routed.

Informed sources said today an exercise was on to check the veracity of the e-mails understood to have been collected since January this year from various places, including from the company's head office in Mumbai.

The development assumes importance in the wake of a top Reliance Infocomm executive, Akhil Gupta, who recently quit the company, blowing the whistle on the re-routing operations by reportedly sending some e-mails to Mukesh Ambani, the company chairman.

While a company spoke-sperson had debunked as "misleading" the reports about the e-mails, Gupta had declined to comment on his communication sent to the chairman.

The probe into the alleged call re-routing was being conducted by various security agencies including the CBI, which had stumbled upon the case when it unearthed an illegal telephone exchange in Chennai last year.