HYDERABAD: Amid the brouhaha over the Pegasus snooping controversy, it has emerged that Andhra Pradesh and Telangana cops were frequent visitors to Homeland Security expos in Israel scouting for sophisticated surveillance and arms equipment.
AP and Telangana cops, however, denied having purchased Pegasus spyware and said their visit was only to know the advancements in anti-terror security areas. But currently, civil rights activist professor G Haragopal’s phone is under surveillance using the Pegasus spyware. A city-based lawyer’s WhatsApp was hacked using the spyware.
A close perusal of GOs issued on foreign trips of officials revealed that between 2010 and 2018, IPS officials of anti-terror wing of Counter Intelligence and the anti-Maoist wing of Special Intelligence Branch attended the expos and demos in various companies. Most visits took place before 2014 when AP was united.
After the bifurcation, it was Andhra cops who were actively engaged in Israel. It may be recalled the UAV and Aerostat purchase move by the police department prior to 2018 had landed then AP Intelligence chief AB Venkateswara Rao in a controversy.
Professor Haragopal told TOI: “I was chairman of ‘committee for defence and release of professor GN Saibaba’. He was our student and later, went to Delhi University. When he was jailed, the committee worked for better facilities for him in the jail as he was suffering from several ailments. We were also working on his bail. When the NIA came to me, I told them the same. I do not know why they chose to include me in Pegasus surveillance. The forensic analysis of my phone seems to be inconclusive.”
Similarly, the first investigation report in November 2019 by Citizen Lab of the University of Toronto revealed that Hyderabad-based lawyer Balla Ravindranath’s WhatsApp was hacked using Pegasus spyware. Ravindranath told TOI, “I got information from both WhatsApp and as well as from Citizen Lab, Toronto. I have been arguing cases of activists branded as Maoists in the court. So, I was targeted.”
He said, “Though it looks like a surveillance from the Centre, both Telangana and AP governments should come clean on this.”
Three IPS officials from AP had attended the IV international conference on homeland security. A GO was issued then. Its contents were: “Mahesh Chandra Laddha, IG of police, intelligence, who is supervising functioning of the counter intelligence cell, ISI-sponsored cross-border terrorism and anti-Maoist activities, attended the conference and was asked to stay back in Israel after conclusion of the conference for three days for carrying out a certain official task.”
N Sambasiva Rao, the then AP DGP, also visited Israel to participate in demonstration of Skystar 180 Aerostat system. In 2014, the then AP police chief, JV Ramudu, went to Israel to attend a homeland and defence security conference. In 2011, three IPS officers — N Balasubrahmanyam, SV Rajasekhar Babu and PHD Ramakrishna — visited Tel Aviv to attend a similar conference.
The visits first started in 2010 when then additional DGP Kode Durga Prasad Rao visited Israel.
