NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Friday asked the Telangana govt whether it wanted to keep former state Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) chief T Prabhakar Rao in jail till he broke down. The SC was hearing an anticipatory bail application filed by Rao, who is an accused in a phone-tapping case.As the hearing commenced, a bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and R Mahadevan expressed inclination to make “absolute” its order of interim bail to the former IPS officer. However, senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, appearing for Telangana, opposed it. He requested the court to consider questions of law raised by the state, including whether a person declared an absconder and residing overseas could have even applied for anticipatory bail.”We have a feeling that you want him to be in jail till he breaks down. Now, we will not let you use our order (granting interim protection) beyond what it was meant for,” the bench said.The top court said state police could call Rao for interrogation even when he was on anticipatory bail. The bench said it had ordered the surrender and custody of Rao on Dec 11 as an “interim Article 142” measure to help in the investigation. It said it would hear the matter on March 10 and extended the interim protection to Rao till then. On Dec 19 last year, SC had extended Rao’s police custody till Dec 25.
