Niira Radia tapes doctored, government tells SC
31 Jan 2012
The government today claimed before the Supreme Court that the Niira Radia tapes, which created a storm of controversy a couple of years back, were tampered with before they were widely leaked to the media; and government agencies were not responsible for their leakage.
The apex court was given a sealed affidavit by the home ministry's lawyers stating that the conversations of corporate lobbyist Radia, whose phones were tapped at the behest of the income tax department in 2008-09, did not match the original tapes.
The case was initiated by industrialist Ratan Tata, who contended that though his phone was not tapped, his privacy was violated because his conversations with Radia were recorded.
The government told the court that there were discrepancies in the lengths of the tapes and the nature of the conversations. It also denied that the taped conversations were leaked by any of its agencies; even as it admitted that there were eight to 10 agencies, including telecom service providers, involved in the tapping
A bench of the apex court headed by Justice G S Singhvi seemed inclined to hear out the government's contentions after going through a few pages of the government's report.
"It is quite possible that someone else has done it (the leakage of the report)'', the bench said.
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