Next time when you download a voice recording app in your mobile phone, ensure the conversations you don’t want others to know are not recorded or deleted. Otherwise you might land in soup like Harry Sebastian, an accused in the sensational cash-for-vote case rocking political bigwigs of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
A mobile phone conversation purportedly made by Telugu Desam supremo and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Niadu with Telangana nominated MLA Elvis Stephenson was the key point in the case. This phone call conversation, leaked to media allegedly by some politicians in power, triggered allegations by Mr. Naidu that the Telangana Government had tapped phones of some top politicians of A.P.
Whatever be the basis and outcome of the allegations, ACB officials found that the conversation purportedly made by Mr. Naidu was not tapped. It was the result of a voice recording app downloaded by Harry Sebastian. A bishop, Mr Sebastian accompanied TD MLA A. Revanth Reddy while offering Rs. 50 lakh to Mr. Stephenson. Somehow Mr Sebastian forgot that every phone call he made or received through that phone was getting recorded. “When we seized and analysed that phone, several of his personal phone call conversations too were recorded along with the one allegedly made by Mr. Naidu,” the investigators unwilling to be identified said.
To counter the allegation that the phone conversation of Mr. Naidu could have been tapped and uploaded into Mr Sebastian’s mobile phone, the ACB officials got the phone tested by forensic experts. They reportedly confirmed that it was not tampered with. When a person calls up another using a mobile phone, it takes a few seconds for the call to originate and land at the other end.
“Interestingly, the voice recording app records everything the moment a number is dialled. In this way, Sebastian’s conversations made with other family members before the receiver took the call were also recorded,” said the investigators. Unaware of these technicalities, Mr Sebastian downloaded the app long ago and all his conversations got recorded.
