New Delhi: Team Anna member Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday alleged telephones of its prominent members were tapped.
Kejriwal said they always had the suspicion but had no
evidence and some incidents have occurred in the last few
days, which confirm their suspicion.
"Phones of all Team Anna members are being tapped...Day
before yesterday, one of Anna’s assistants read out his note
to me which said that Anna would like to go to Rajghat for a
while when he came to Delhi.
"He wanted that this should not be disclosed to anyone as
he wanted to sit there alone in peace for sometime. Within 15
minutes of this conversation. Our office got a call from the
police asking us to give all details of Anna’s visit to
Rajghat. We were completely shocked," Kejriwal said.
The allegation came on a day when Anna Hazare and his
team were engulfed in a fresh controversy as the Gandhian's
blogger Raju Parulekar made public a letter which was kept
under wraps. Parulekar did so to claim innocence after as
Hazare claimed that he had not spoken to the blogger about
reorganising his core team.
Noting that phones of only those people who are a threat
to national security could be tapped as per law, Kejriwal said
"permission to tap phones under present law is given by the
Home Secretary. Would the Home Secretary or the Home Minister
clarify whether such permission was ever given to any agency
to tap our phones? If yes, how is Team Anna a threat to
national security?"
"Any intelligence agency, including anti-corruption
agency, can tap phones after obtaining permission from Home
Secretary. Present Home Secretary’s immediate boss P
Chidambaram is under cloud for his alleged role in 2G scam.
"Obviously, no Home Secretary would ever give permission
to any agency to investigate against his own boss. We have
been demanding that after Lokpal is set up, such permission
should be given by a bench of Lokpal rather than the Home
Secretary. Government has been opposing this for obvious
reasons," he said.
PTI
First Published: Saturday, November 05, 2011, 17:11