Two more senior police officers in Telangana on Saturday, March 23, were arrested for allegedly spying on opposition leaders and destroying vital documents during the previous tenure of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS). Former Special Intelligence Branch (SIB) DSP Praneeth Rao was arrested and sent to judicial custody for 14 days recently in connection with the case.
The two senior police officers arrested on Saturday were identified as Thirupathanna, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police, CSW, Hyderabad City Police (formerly Additional Superintendent of Police, SIB), and N Bhujanga Rao, Additional Superintendent of Police, Bhoopalapally (formerly Additional Superintendent of Police, Intelligence Department).
According to Vijay Kumar, Deputy Commissioner of Police for the west zone, the arrested officers confessed to participating in various illegal activities, including monitoring of individuals by abusing their official positions. This included efforts to destroy evidence and conceal their involvement in collaboration with Praneeth and others.
The Punjagutta police had launched an investigation against Praneeth based on a complaint filed by his superior, SIB's additional SP D Ramesh. The complaint alleged that Praneeth had developed profiles of unidentified persons and tracked them using 17 computers with dedicated Internet lines. Praneeth had also destroyed data by burning hard drives immediately after the results of Assembly polls were announced on December 3 last year. To cover up his actions, he reportedly switched off CCTV cameras and replaced the hard disks with new ones and was arrested by the police on March 13.