A Supreme Court lawyer from New Delhi has submitted a complaint to the Prime Minister's office, alleging that the Essar Group tapped telephonic conversations of several ministers, bureaucrats, businessmen and even a Bollywood star between 2001 and 2006, The Indian Express has reported.
According to the report, the complaint is based on thousands of audio tape conversations held among the top brass and high-profile ministers, that the lawyer's client, Albasit Khan, a former head of security at Essar Group, was instructed to record. The complaint was submitted to the PMO on June 1 this year.
The Supreme Court is already hearing a Public Interest Litigation moved by the Centre, seeking a probe into Essar Group's alleged nexus with certain bureaucrats, politicians and journalists, the report says. The Ruia brothers are also being investigated in the 2G case.
IE said it had accessed the 29-page complaint filed by lawyer Suren Uppal. Over a five-year period, this is the list of government officials, businessmen, and more, whose conversations were recorded.
| Politicians |
| Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi |
| Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu |
| Former ministers Praful Patel and Ram Naik late Cabinet minister Pramod Mahajan |
| MP Amar Singh |
| Businessmen |
| Reliance Industries' Mukesh Ambani |
| Reliance ADAG Group's Anil Ambani, his wife Tina Ambani |
| Reliance top officials |
| IDBI Bank ex-chairman P P Vora |
| ICICI Bank ex-CEO, MD K V Kamath |
| ICICI Bank ex-joint managing director Lalita Gupte |
| Sahara Group's Subrata Roy |
| Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan |
Albasit Khan, the ex-head of security at the company, who claimed to have been tasked with the tapping operations, said that the order came from Prashant Ruia and Ravikant Ruia in 2001, the report says.
He told his lawyer that the order was given to him stating Essar's "statutory obligations to support the government investigations by intercepting and tapping such phones which are under Government surveillance" as the company was a "telecom licensee for cellular operations under M/s Hutchison Essar, the report said.
The complaint was filed after Uppal sent a caution notice to the top management of the Essar Group on March 2, he said.
However, the report maintains that the authenticity of the tapes hadn't been verified yet. Meanwhile, the Essar Group has called the claims in the caution notice as "false and baseless".
Since he approached the lawyer, Khan has gone under the radar. Uppal points to Essar Group.
