Hyderabad, May 22 (PTI) A city court has issued a proclamation order against former chief of Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) in Telangana, T Prabhakar Rao, an accused in the phone-tapping case.
As per the order, Rao may be declared a "proclaimed offender" if he does not appear before the court by June 20.
The court on May 20 issued the proclamation order and directed the police to serve it on Rao.
Accordingly, copies of the order were pasted on the house of the accused here on Thursday and in the community hall of the colony besides reading it out there, a senior police official said.
The order stated that he was absconding in the case and not attending the court.
After hearing a petition filed by the police earlier seeking to declare Rao as a proclaimed offender, the court issued the order, the official said.
Despite the issuance of a non-bailable warrant against him earlier, he had failed to appear before the court, police said.
If a person is declared a proclaimed offender, the court can order attachment of properties of the accused.
Rao, the key accused in the phone-tapping case, is suspected to be in the US. A Red Corner Notice was already issued against him and his passport was revoked, the official said.
A suspended DSP of SIB was among four police officials who were arrested by Hyderabad Police since March 2024, for allegedly erasing the intelligence information from various electronic gadgets as well as for alleged phone-tapping during the previous BRS regime. They were subsequently granted bail.
The accused are part of the alleged conspiracy in which they "misused" the resources of SIB for political purposes by putting citizens from different walks of life under surveillance, police had said.
Those named as accused in the case along with others had allegedly developed profiles of several persons unauthorisedly and were accused of monitoring them clandestinely and illegally in SIB and using them in a partisan manner to favour a political party at the behest of some persons and also conspiracy in destroying the records to cause disappearance of evidence of their crimes, police earlier said.