When snooping goes awry

A day after allegations surfaced of illegal snooping of a young woman by Gujarat strongman Amit Shah, allegedly at the behest of Narendra Modi; the Congress is a miffed lot. Since the tapes failed to make it to news headlines or more importantly get the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s top brass rattled, despite the finger pointing at their prime ministerial candidate, Congress leaders decided to up the ante. Information & Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari hit out at Modi saying, "First the Gujarat pogrom, which was followed by a fake encounter and now the brazen assault on civil liberty by state sponsored stalking." He questioned: "Is this the BJP's definition of freedom and liberty?" Digvijay Singh took to Twitter, "Modi and Amit Shah use Gujarat Police to spy on an innocent girl! Didn't Gujarat police and then home minister violate the law of the land?" Congress General Secretary Shakeel Ahmed also tweeted: "For 'saheb' Amit Shah, then MoS Home, used cops to snoop on a young woman from Gujarat. Everyone asking who is the 'saheb'? Media speculating!" Trenchant Modi critics, the CPI (M), in an official release, condemned the incident and demanded a court-monitored probe into the illegal surveillance. The CPI (M) said, "It raises serious questions once again about the state of civil liberties in Gujarat." Directly attacking Modi the CPI (M) stated, "To use the powers of the state, and further to use the anti-terrorist squad to snoop on the private life of a young woman, to follow her every movement, to snoop also on her other family members and friends, shows the utterly unethical and illegal practices and degeneration of the minimum norms of democratic governance under Modi."