File FIR against erring cops: Vigilance report

“Our investigation is complete. I have submitted my report to ADGP Prithvi Raj stating that there is a prima facie case for lodging an FIR. Now,it’s up to the government to take follow up action,” said A P Singh,DIG (Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau),who is heading the probe.

While Singh declined to divulge details of his findings,he claimed that some annexes and supporting records (mainly in digital form) would substantiate the probe and could help the government in deciding further course of action.

“The report will be forwarded to the government on Monday,as I need to do some internal scrutiny of the material on record,” Raj said.

According to sources,the report confirmed that over 1,300 telephones were tapped during the BJP regime and many were put under voice interruptions on flimsy grounds. Many,mainly cellphones,were tapped without permissions and in the absence of any compelling grounds.

But the most serious violation,the report stated was related to the storage of records of the recorded conversations for three to four years. Under the Indian Telegraph Act,records pertaining to phone tapping,including recorded conversations — unless they are required for any probe or need to be produced in court as evidence — should be destroyed every six months.

Legal experts say that the Act uses the word “irretrievable”,meaning that which cannot be reconstructed or retrieved from the hard disc. In this case,the probe suggested that the conversations were kept alive even though its related records for grant of permissions were destroyed.

The probe has reportedly found four major grounds to allege violations of the Indian Telegraph Act and IT Act. These include keeping records of conversations beyond six months; permissions taken or granted on flimsy grounds without exploring other options; no follow-ups on information (recorded conversations) or selective action in some cases; and recording conversations that the police were not authorised to probe. “There is one recording relating to a money laundering case for which only the Income Tax department is the competent authority to investigate,” said a source.

The probe has also come across an incident where an officer was booked in a graft case on the basis of phone tapping records,but the politician for whom he was collecting the money,was left out. Since the case is already under trial,Vigilance may move court for permission to make the politician also an accused in the case.

However,Vigilance officials admitted that all recorded conversations contained in 70,000 files cannot be scrutinised as it would take at least two years to transcript the conversations — a few of which are in the local dialect. “Our role was limited to finding out whether law has been violated. So,we have restricted our probe to only those points. If the government proposes to take the matter further,it will have to order registration of the FIR or propose another form of inquiry,” A P Singh said.

The hard discs of CID and Vigilance computers were seized after the Congress came to power on December 25 last year. A team of forensic experts scanned the hard discs and an inquiry was entrusted to the Vigilance on the basis of the findings in the report.

As many as 1,385 phones were allegedly intercepted between January 2009 and December 2012 with permission. Out of this,257 phones were put on surveillance from July to December 2012.