Almost all the law enforcement agencies have been put on the dock by country’s second largest telecom service provider Reliance Communications in an affidavit to the Supreme Court on the telephone tapping controversy as the company accused them of flouting the rules laid down by the department of telecom on the interception of telephonic messages.
“Respondent No-8 (Reliance) has been writing to the police and the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and have also earlier brought it to the notice of DoT that the agencies are using different formats for providing requests for interception,” Reliance’s nodal officer Col. (retd) A.K. Sachdeva stated in the affidavit.
In fact, Reliance counsel Ram Jethmalani sprang a surprise during Monday’s hearing by filing the 21-page affidavit detailing several alleged violations of DoT rules by the agencies like CBI, IB, DRI on interception of phones in the process of investigation into the serious crimes.
“Upon receipt of any direction from LEAs like the state police, CBI, IB, DRI etc, the procedure laid down under rule 419-A of Indian Telegraph Act requires to be followed,” Reliance said while citing several instances where these agencies in fact had violated rule 419-A.
The company said in such a situation a service provider always found itself handicap to return any request which was not in order as it will be taken as defiance of the orders of the LEAs. “When a request for interception is received, the service provider is duty bound to comply with it immediately and there is no provision/rule under which it can send the request back by pointing out such mistakes since the requests received were urgent and in national interest,” Reliance said. No telecom service provider could even afford to postpone the compliance of the orders of any LEA merely on the ground of “inconsequential mistakes as it may lead to serious terrorist attack and the blame may well fall on us,” the company submitted.