Former Gujarat DGP R B Sreekumar on Tuesday claimed that he had been asked to tap the phone of Congress leader Shankarsinh Vaghela in 2002,but he had refused. Many officers in the state,however,act as directed by Chief Minister Narendra Modi,Sreekumar said. The former IPS officer,who has been taking on Modi,on Tuesday filed a criminal defamation and conspiracy suit against the BJPs prime ministerial candidate,party chief Rajnath Singh,BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi and space scientist Nambi Narayanan,accusing them of carrying out a malicious campaign against him over the ISRO spying case. Narayanan has blamed Sreekumar,then an IB officer in Kerala,for the charges that resulted in his being sent to prison and an end to his career,but which were ultimately thrown out by the Supreme Court. The BJP has accused Sreekumar of cooking up the case against Narayanan at the behest of the CIA. I was asked by the (then) chief secretary to tap Vaghelas phone,who said that it was on the orders of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. I refused to do so but Modi has been using the state machinery to conduct such surveillance, Sreekumar told reporters on Tuesday. He was reacting to recent allegations that Modis aide Amit Shah had ordered the Gujarat ATS to mount illegal surveillance on a woman. Sreekumar said that when he was ADG (Intelligence) in Gujarat,he was also asked to snoop on Haren Pandya,one of Modis detractors who was shot dead in Ahmedabad in 2003. I was also asked to carry out surveillance on BJP leader Haren Pandya. There are many officers in Gujarat who act on the directions of the CM. Modi is not ungrateful,and rewards the officers who are loyal to him, Sreekumar,who retired as the states police chief in 2007,said. Since leaving his job,Sreekumar has filed nine affidavits in Gujarat riots cases. Counsel for Sreekumar Brijesh Kalappa said,The BJP has raked up the two decades old ISRO case in order to paint Sreekumar black only with a view to ensure that the bulk of his evidence in Zakia Jafris petition is trashed,the verdict on which is expected on December 2. In his complaint,Sreekumar has said: .On 25.9.2013,Modi met Nambi Narayanan in Kerala and hatched a conspiracy to harm the reputation of the complainant to tarnish the complainants image in public. The fact about the meeting has been published by several newspapers. The detail of conspiracy was to harm the reputation of the complainant by digging out an old closed case of 1994. Comparing Modi to the Mahabharatas Duryodhana,Sreekumar has said the BJP should come out with credible proof before labelling him a CIA agent. They indulged in extreme vilification campaign,malicious propaganda against me continuously by raking up a case closed by the NDA and subsequent UPA governments and also the Supreme Court, Sreekumar has said.
