On the evening of Friday, 2 October, a phone conversation between India Today journalist Tanushree Pandey and a relative of the Dalit woman who was allegedly gang-raped and murdered in Hathras, was leaked on social media.
Following a report on right-wing digital portal OpIndia, Times Now ran a show on a number of ‘leaked’ phone calls involving people in the village, including the victim’s family.
At this time, it is unclear how exactly the conversations in question were recorded, and how they reached social media and certain sections of the media. The conversations could have been recorded by either of the parties on their phones, and then eventually found their way into the public domain.
However, given the family’s claims that they are under surveillance and their phones had even been taken away by the police at one point, there are credible concerns that there may be a different explanation: phone-tapping.
In fact, when asked about this on an India Today show, BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya did not deny the allegation, saying there are processes in place for tapping phones.