Hyderabad: Confession statement of former Task Force OSD Potlapally RadhaKishan Rao, who was arrested in the sensational phone tapping case, has stirred a political storm in Telangana. While the statement dates back to April 9, it came to light on Monday evening.
In the statement, Rao claimed that the then chief minister, K Chandrashekar Rao wanted to corner BJP using MLAs poaching case. KCR also wanted the arrest of BJP's top leader in south, BL Santosh in the MLAs poaching case, to bring the saffron party's central leadership to a compromise which will help him get rid of ED case linked to Deli liquor scam on his daughter MLC K Kavitha.
According to Rao's statement, KCR was upset that his plan didn't went through as expected. Kavitha has been arrested by the ED and is now lodged in Tihar jail.
“The operation was carried out and the Cyberabad SOT police took further action. Later, the SIT was formed and KCR wanted the arrest of BL Santosh, the BJP national level leader to make the case strong so that BJP would come for compromise and it can be used to get rid of the ED case on his daughter MLC Kavitha.
However due to inefficiency of some Cyberabad police officers in Kerala one important person of Mata Amritanandamayi Institution escaped police apprehension and later a police team was sent to Kerala in chartered flight but the work could not be completed. The case went to High Court where not to arrest orders were issued and then the SIT case was transferred to CBI. Peddayana (CM KCR) was very angry for not completing the work as per his expectation. Further details of this case I will not disclose as i owe a lot to peddayana who had re-appointed me two times and posted in city task force after my retirement in 2020.
Simultaneously, during Munugode bye-elections at the same time, we were tasked with seizure of money belonging to all relatives and associates of Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy,” Radhakishan Rao said in his confession statement.
Until now four cops have been arrested by the police for their alleged involvement in illegal phone tapping. A Special Investigation Team (SIT) led by west zone DCP SM Vijay Kumar has been probing the phone tapping incidents following a complaint in March by SIB's additional SP, D Ramesh.
The SIT in its remand report submitted to the court in April said the fourth accused in the case, former Task Force OSD, P Radhakishan Rao, said that he had confessed that an exclusive team was formed by the then IG T Prabhakar Rao who was the chief of SIB to conduct surveillance on political leaders, opposition leaders, dissidents in BRS and also that team had worked with a common goal to ensure hat trick win of BRS party in the 2023 polls.
Radha Kishan Rao in his statement said that a special operations group led by the now suspended DSP, Dugyala Praneeth Rao was formed to conduct surveillance.
“One major work we did in 2022 in the month of October was related to the Moinabad farmhouse MLAs poaching case. Probably, sometime in the last week of October, one day PrabhakarRao discussed with me that the CM KCR had got an information from one MLA Pilot Rohith Reddy that some persons claiming to be influential in BJP are in touch with him asking him to leave BRS and join BJP along with some more MLAS. Then CM KCR, thinking to use it to corner BJP had asked the SIB to monitor the same by putting survéillance over those private persons and the MLA and the SIB Praneeth Kumar did the surveillance and provided one audio clip by intercepting the cell phones. The same audio clip was given to KCR and he ordered us to plan to lay a trap by strictly instructing the MLA Rohith Reddy to cooperate with us. ccordingly, the MLA enticed the private persons, one Nandu and two lesser known Swamijis to come to a farm house near Aziz Nagar, near Moinabad as per our plan. I had procured spy cameras for this purpose by sending my task force officers Srinath Reddy, Inspector and Srikanth, Sl to Delhi through some contacts and got them fixed in the farm house by our task force officers,” Rao said in the confession statement.
BJP was quick to react to the confession statement by Rao. “The confession by former DCP Radha Kishan Rao in poaching case vindicated our allegations that former chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao was architect and director of BRS MLAs case involving Tandur ex-MLA Pilot Rohit Reddy,” said Telangana BJP official spokesperson N V Subhash on Tuesday.
He added KCR had hatched a conspiracy to defame image of BJP and named a senior party functionary in the case which was now exposed with the revelation of ex-DCP who confessed that the former wanted to have a compromise with BJP in a bid to bail out his MLC daughter K Kavitha in an infamous Delhi liquor scam case who is now under judicial custody, Subhash said. He accused the then BRS government led by KCR of misusing police officials against his political rivals by tapping their phones for political gain and demanded the state Congress government to take action against former CM KCR.
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