Telangana government issued orders suspending former Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) Deputy Superintendent of Police Dugyala Praneet Rao on charges of misuse of power and illicit phone tapping.
The suspended officer, who was currently working in the Director General of Police (DGP) office, is facing allegations of misuse of power. Rao, who was a DSP during the tenure of the previous government led by K Chandrasekhar Rao, was accused of tapping the phones of opposition party leaders and even the DGP during K Chandrasekhar Rao’s administration.
The controversy came to light when current Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, in 2021 when he was an opposition leader, publicly claimed that Rao, under directions from the then Chief Minister, led a team of about 30 officers for spying on the DGP.
Moreover, he was also involved in “removing and replacing 42 hard disks in desktops and laptops located in his SOT logger room, thereby erasing important data of Special Operations targets from the database, further dismantling HDDs with the help of electrician by switching off all cameras of SIB building, leading to destruction of all available data with a criminal intent,” the order issued by DGC Ravi Gupta read on Monday.
