Reacting to KT Rama Rao’s remark that ‘phones may have been tapped,’ Telangana chief minister Revanth Reddy warned that anyone who was involved in the alleged phone-tapping under the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government, ‘will be sent to jail.’

Both Rao’s statement and Reddy’s response came at a time when arrests have been made in connection with the alleged tapping.

“Earlier, the government scared the people who voted for them, by tapping. KTR is saying that they tapped a few calls, so what? Can anyone speak like that? You will go to Cherlapalli jail. The officers who listened to them (BRS government) are in jail,” the chief minister said on Friday.

Reddy, who succeeded KTR’s father and BRS president, K Chandrashekar Rao, as Telangana’s chief minister, and first from outside the BRS, reiterated that all those who listen to ‘evil doers’ will be jailed.

“We already said that they (phone-tappers) are evil doers, thieves, and if you listen to them, you will go to jail. KTR is speaking like an unbridled bull. They will pay for it, the case is under investigation,” the Congress leader vowed.

What KTR said?

Speaking at a function on Wednesday, KT Rama Rao had said that ‘maybe, phones of one or two (people) may have been tapped.’

“…but what do I know of it? If it happened, it may have been the phones of crooks and thieves. That is the job of the police anyway. But it is being painted as if an internal conspiracy, or something huge, happened,” he had stated.

The issue is being ‘blown out of proportion’ as a ‘diversionary’ tactic by the Congress government and CM Reddy to ‘sidestep the failure’ of the ‘promises’ made by the grand old party in the run-up to the assembly elections late last year, the BRS working president added.