The analysis reveals conversations were not just ‘personal’
press trust of india
New Delhi, 1 August
The Supreme Court today pulled up the Income Tax department and the CBI for not taking action in the past five years on information gathered from tapped phone conversations of Niira Radia with corporate honchos, politicians and others, saying it is “not a happy situation”.
A Bench of Mr Justices G S Singhvi and Mr K S Radhakrishnan asked the authorities why they did not take action as the tapes contain talks “far beyond” personal conversations.
“The tapping was done five years ago, what have they (government authorities) done so far? Were they waiting for the court’s order?,” the Bench said. After going through the analysis of the conversations, done by a six-member special team constituted by the apex court, the Bench said action should have been taken earlier.
“After this report, a lot of things have come to light. We thought the conversation was only personal but the analysis says it is far beyond that,” the Bench said. It asked the IT department to place before the Bench, all original records pertaining to authorisation of tapping of Radia’s phones.
The court directed the IT department, which had tapped Radia’s phones, to apprise it whether the officers entrusted with the task of tapping had informed their seniors about the contents of the recording and whether the CBI was informed about criminality with regard to matters referred to in the conversations.
The Bench directed the IT department to comply with its order by 6 August when the matter will be taken up for further hearing.
The court was hearing a plea of an NGO Centre for PIL seeking the court’s direction to make the conversations public.
Additional Solicitor General A S Chandiok submitted the IT Department cannot make it public and if anyone wants the contents of the tapped conversations, then he may seek information under the RTI Act.
Senior Advocate Harish Salve, appearing for Mr Ratan Tata who had approached the apex court for a direction not to make public his private conversation with Ms Radia, said a proper mechanism needs to be in place to prevent misuse of phone- tapping and Central Vigilance Commission should be involved in it.
The apex court had said yesterday that it would direct a CBI probe into several aspects arising out of the tapped telephonic conversations of Ms Radia.The apex court, which perused the report and transcripts prepared by its specially constituted team of investigators, had said “some of the items highlighted will be the subject matter of investigation”.
The analysis of the conversations was done by a six-member special team constituted by the apex court and five from the CBI and one from the IT department.