Delhi Police was told Amar Singh’s number on tapping list

The Delhi Police have maintained that the letters authorising the tapping which Reliance Infocomm received were forged. They have arrested two private detectives and a Reliance official.

The list of intercepted numbers was sent to the Deputy Secretary (Home) and Karnal Singh, Joint Commissioner (Special Cell) on October 26. The company stated that the attached list was of numbers for which ‘‘orders of the designated authority, i.e. the Principal Secretary (Home), Government of NCT, Delhi are awaited.’’

There were 323 numbers (in three separate lists) attached with the communication.

Delhi Police have confirmed the receipt of the list of intercepted numbers. Said Karnal Singh, whose acknowledgement of the Infocomm letter is now with the DoT: ‘‘We keep getting such lists with requests for authorisation from the service providers. However, we could not match the telephone number with the authorisation and detect the forgery since Reliance had not put the name of the designated Joint Commissioner against each number as they are required to do.’’

Interestingly, Karnal Singh says that following the ‘‘incomplete’’ list, he had sent a Delhi Police official to the office of Reliance Infocomm and one of their officials had also visited them.

In fact, two days after a police officer visited Reliance Infocomm to check who the JCP who authorised the tapping was, the purported letter from R Narayanaswamy, Principal Secretary (Home), authorising the tapping reached the service provider.

‘‘Our request for the names of the corresponding joint commissioners to match the numbers did not (get response). So I verbally asked all private service providers to disconnect the phone taps for all numbers for which authorisation had not come after October 28th.’’Asked how a large volume of intercepted numbers were awaiting authorisation, that too from a single service provider, Police Commissioner K K Paul said, ‘‘Delays do happen in getting the authorisation from the Home Department, but it is difficult to say what the average delay is.’’

The correspondence reveals the operators have been tapping phones for 15 days, even without authorization, using a new regulation (Rule 419 A) inserted in the Government rules some three years after the Supreme Court gave guidelines for telephonic interceptions. This rule was communicated to the operators on March 25, 2003 and permitted interception for 15 days ‘‘subject to confirmation from concerned competent officer.’’