Shimla, January 23
The State Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau of Himachal Pradesh has recorded the statement of Director General of Police (Home Guard) ID Bhandari in the phone tapping case.

A team headed by an SP is likely to go to Hyderabad within a week to question former DGP B Kamal Kumar.

With the statement of Bhandari, who remained Additional Director General of Police (CID) for a long time, being finally recorded and Kumar’s to be recorded in the next week, the charge-sheet may be put up in court soon.

Bhandari’s statement was recorded yesterday. Though nobody has been named in the case, all senior police officers who were posted in the CID wing - the nodal agency to seek permission for phone interceptions - are being questioned as part of routine investigation. Two Inspector General-rank IPS officers have already been asked about the permissions granted during their tenure.

It was on the night of December 24 and 26, when the Congress formed the government, that the hard disc of all computers in the technical wing of the CID were seized, following allegations that phones of politicians, both from the Congress and the BJP, and bureaucrats had been intercepted.

The Vigilance team probing the case had been able to cull data of telephones intercepted from January to December in 2012 from the Home and from July to December in 2012 from the CID wing.