New Delhi: The Supreme Court has directed the private telephone companies to file an affidavit explaining if a telephone service provider can tap a particular phone of one individual on the request of another subscriber.
Taking up the Amar Singh phone-tapping case, the Apex Court issued notices to the telecom operators, asking if a telephone service provider can tap the phone of one individual on the request of another subscriber and also asked the telephone service providers to suggest guidelines to prevent illegal phone-tapping.
Earlier, filing an affidavit at the court, the Union Home Ministry told the Apex Court that 20 cases of illegal phone-tapping took place between September 2005 and February 2006. No approval was taken from the competent authorities in these cases, the MHA said.
The affidavit further said between September 2005 and February 2006, there were 439 cases of phone-tapping and in 419 of the cases, proper approval was taken from the competent authority.
In 20 cases, no approval was taken within the specified time period from the competent authorities. In total, as many as 3,728 lines were under surveillance by the seven security & law enforcement agencies till the end of February, the MHA affidavit said.
The court was hearing a petition of SP leader Amar Singh, seeking a judicial probe into the phone-tapping issue. Earlier in an interim order, the court had banned the broadcast of any tapped telephone conversations involving Amar Singh.
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