Action on Himachal phone tapping inquiry report anytime

Action in specific cases on phone tapping inquiry report will be taken soon and registration of FIR against some officials is also not ruled out, highly placed sources said.
The vigilance and anti-corruption bureau of Himachal Pradesh police have completed the inquiry into the phone tapping during the previous BJP government on June 15 and recommended registration of FIR against the erring officials and submitted the report to the government.
"The report is with the chief minister and orders are awaited," sources in vigilance and anti-corruption Bureau said.
Highly placed sources in the government said that as per the enquiry report, Indian Telegraph Act and Information Technology Act have been violated, phones were tapped illegally without authorisation from competent authority, permission for tapping the phones of some people had been taken repeatedly on flimsy grounds.

Records of tapped conversion which were not required as evidence were not destroyed within maximum period of six months and in some cases no action had been taken on incriminating evidence in conversations which constituted an offence, they said.
The vigilance and anti-corruption bureau did not scan the audio files as the number of files was as high as 70,000 and it would have taken months and years to scan it.

Sources said that politicians, bureaucrats and some journalists were among the people whose phones had been tapped during the BJP regime.
The vigilance inquiry into the alleged phone tapping has prima facie established that telephones of top politicians, bureaucrats, cops, realtors and journalists were intercepted in violation of the Indian Telegraph Act and Information Technology Act.

The hard discs of CID and Vigilance computers were seized after the Congress came to power on December 25 last year and a team of forensic experts from the state Forensic science laboratory scanned the hard discs and enquiry was entrusted to Vigilance Bureau on the basis of the findings in the report.