Dispute erupts in India over surveillance by candidate

New Delhi: In a set of telephone transcripts and recordings that were published by an Indian website this month, high-ranking intelligence and security officers from the western state of Gujarat can be heard reporting back on an unusual assignment: covertly tracing every movement of a young woman, meticulously documenting her contacts with men. Their findings were passed to another high-ranking official they referred to as "Saheb."

Though no one mentions his name in the transcripts, the context leaves little doubt that Saheb is Narendra Modi, Gujarat's chief minister, who hopes to be India's next prime minister.

The "snooping controversy," as it has been called by Indian newspapers, comes six months before national elections, as Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party rides a wave of anti-incumbency sentiment. After a flurry of reports in the Indian news media, Modi's government on Monday appointed a two-member commission to investigate charges that surveillance of the young woman had been carried out illegally.

After the transcripts were published, a spokeswoman for Modi's party acknowledged that Modi had used government resources to monitor "the girl," but did so because her father had requested security for her, so it was not a violation of her rights. Another version has come from a suspended civil servant from Gujarat, who says he fell out with Modi because he had information about a secret relationship between the leader and the young woman, an architect.

The woman, who has since married, has made no public statements.

The matter is unlikely to drive away Modi's supporters, who are braced for a season of partisan exposes. But it has set off a discussion of the use of state surveillance in Gujarat, which Modi has run with a firm grip since 2001.

"The fact is that for a lot of people, this is part of his appeal, that he is a tough leader, he does what he thinks needs to be done," said Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of The Indian Express, a daily newspaper. "I think people are overcorrecting for a very weak government, and there is a hankering for a strong government, whatever a strong government means."

He added, though, that undecided voters might be concerned that Modi had used the police to follow the woman, who was not suspected of any crime. "People who are in the middle may worry that if this guy comes to power, he'll have many more agencies under him," Gupta said.

The website that published the transcripts, Cobrapost, said they were provided to India's Central Bureau of Investigation this year by a Gujarat police officer, G.L. Singhal, who is accused of carrying out extrajudicial killings and had decided to cooperate with the authorities.

The level of scrutiny was extraordinary, according to the transcripts. The man supervising the operation was Amit Shah, one of Modi's top aides, who now occupies a crucial post in the BJP campaign. Shah instructed officers to collect footage from surveillance cameras, supply records from the woman's phone carrier, follow her to gyms and shopping malls and tail her from an airport arrival lounge.

"In case she escapes, we can keep a vigil at the hotel," Shah says, according to the transcript. Singhal recounts the woman's telephone conversations, remarking, "Sir, she talks very rudely with her mother." Shah nervously urges his subordinate not to allow the woman to slip away unnoticed, saying repeatedly, "Saheb comes to know of everything."

Neither Modi nor the government of Gujarat has commented on the transcripts, which were heavily covered on Indian news broadcasts. Civil and security officials in Gujarat did not respond to requests for comment.

The day after the recordings were published, Meenakshi Lekhi, a spokeswoman for the BJP, questioned why "CDs that were part of official state property were made available to members of the opposition," and dismissed them as a smear by the Congress Party, which leads the national government.

The National Commission for Women, a government body overseeing women's rights, last week requested an investigation into a possible violation of the Indian Telegraph Act, which limits the state's ability to tap phone lines. In an effort to forestall an inquiry, the woman's father, Pranlal Soni, a jewelry merchant in Gujarat, appealed to the commission with a letter, saying he had asked Modi, an old friend, to provide state protection for his daughter.

"My daughter is fully aware of all types of help that was rendered by the state machinery," the letter said. "She is fully conscious that the said help was absolutely necessary." The commission has forwarded the letter to security agencies to verify its authenticity and contents.

Another perspective has come from Pradeep Sharma, a former civil servant who now faces corruption charges in Gujarat. Sharma has petitioned for a change of venue, saying his prosecution is politically motivated. In an application submitted to the Supreme Court on Saturday, he said that he had introduced Modi to the "young lady architect" to whom the transcripts refer, and that Modi had feared that he would disclose politically damaging information about their relationship.

"It is for this reason that a number of false and frivolous cases against the applicant were registered with a view to implicate him and 'punish him,'" the application reads.

A BJP leader, Arun Jaitley, portrayed Sharma's testimony as a Congress Party smear campaign. "They are back to their old game of detecting a disgruntled police officer or a civil servant and getting him to make absurd charges," Jaitley said in a note posted on Facebook.

Bharat Desai, the editor of the Gujarat edition of The Times of India, said the "snooping scandal" would have little impact in the chief minister's home state because "it's a known fact that a lot of telephones are illegally tapped here."

R.B. Sreekumar, a former director of police intelligence in the state, said he clashed with Modi in 2002 after refusing to wiretap the phones of a Congress politician, and was removed from his post. At the time, he said in an interview, about 150 phones were tapped through legal procedures, but "a large number" of wiretaps had been carried out without authorization.

"Tapping of phones depends on the government and the political leadership," Sreekumar said. "Most officers are more than willing to follow the political dictate to advance their own interests and careers."