The Amar Singh phone tapping case on Friday took a new turn with the Supreme Court taking serious view of Reliance Communications putting his phone on surveillance on a forged letter of the Delhi home secretary and asked the Centre why the licence of the service provider was not cancelled for such a casual approach.
Pointing out at least eight grammatical and spelling mistakes in the letter bearing the date of November 9, 2005 and forged signature of the then Delhi government home secretary Ramesh Narayanswamy, a bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly told Solicitor-General Gopal Subramaniam that no service provider could be allowed to get away with such a lapse as it would put the freedom of an individual in “jeopardy”.
“Any service provider will not act on this kind of communication, it is gross negligence. It either has been done deliberately or they are so incompetent to act on an order full of mistakes. Why did not you cancel its (Reliance) licence. You should have cancelled the licence per se on such an order full of mistake coming from the home secretary, who is a high ranking IAS officer,” the court told Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam.
The top court pointed out that when several people in the country were raising serious questions on tapping of the phones, no service provider could be allowed to function in such a casual manner as has serious consequences for the security of the nation facing terrorist threat for the past several years.
“Tomorrow if the telephone of the Chief of Army staff is given by some terrorist organisations and his conversation is transferred to other country what ill happen to this country? This way anybody’s communication can be intercepted by an unscrupulous service provider and then what is the guarantee of the individual’s freedom and personal liberty,” exasperated bench said.
While the S-G acknowledged that it was a “serious lapse” on the part of Reliance, the service provider’s lawyer will respond on February 14 to the top court’s query.
“These are valid points (raised by the court) as we are dealing with airways interception. Undoubtedly any interception should be as per the provisions of the law,” the S-G said adding “there is an obligation cast on the service provider given the licence”.
But the court was not satisfied with the reply of the S-G, appearing for the Delhi police as no action was taken against any of official of Reliance while booking four persons, including a security guard assigned the job by the company to collect orders from the police for interception.
“The service provider is entitled to look at the order and not act blindly. It should have acted with some sense of responsibility,” the court said.