Phone tapping case: Delhi Police summons Gehlot’s OSD Lokesh Sharma

The crime department of the Delhi Police has summoned Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s officer-on-special-duty (OSD), Lokesh Sharma, in reference to the telephone tapping case.
Sharma has been requested by the Delhi Police to look at its workplace at 11 am on July 24, in reference to an FIR lodged by Union Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat earlier on March 25 this 12 months, wherein Sharma is an accused. In his criticism, Shekhawat had accused Sharma and others of legal conspiracy and “unlawfully intercepting telegraphic signals (telephonic conversation).”
When contacted by The Indian Express, Sharma confirmed that he acquired the discover on Wednesday.
However, Sharma is unlikely to go for questioning because the matter is already being heard by the Delhi High Court, the place he had prayed for the quashing of the FIR.
Earlier, on June 3, the courtroom had stayed any coercive motion by Delhi Police towards Sharma till additional orders. The subsequent listening to within the matter is on August 6.
Last month, the Delhi Police Crime Branch had additionally issued summons to Congress Chief Whip Mahesh Joshi, asking him to look earlier than it on June 24. He skipped the summons citing a number of causes, together with the on-going case within the High Court. Joshi had termed it “political malice, unwarranted pressure” and had “challenged” Shekhawat to offer his voice samples within the case.
The summons to Sharma, his first within the case, come days after a Jaipur courtroom issued instructions to a subordinate courtroom to take voice samples of Shekhawat and alleged intermediary Sanjay Jain within the case, which can also be being investigated by the Rajasthan Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) since final 12 months. During the listening to within the case lodged in Delhi by Shekhawat, the HC had requested why the FIR shouldn’t be transferred to Rajasthan, saying that since all of the developments befell in Rajasthan, why the lone FIR is being investigated in Delhi.
Last 12 months, the leak of audio tapes allegedly involving one Gajendra Singh, Sanjay Jain, in addition to Congress MLAs Bhanwarlal Sharma and Vishvendra Singh had led to a political disaster in Rajasthan, with the then Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot main a rise up of 19 Congress MLAs. Of these, bar Vishvendra Singh, Joshi had named different three in his criticism with the ACB final 12 months.
Following The Indian Express report in March which said that the federal government had accepted telephones had been tapped in the course of the political disaster final 12 months, Parliamentary Affairs minister Shanti Dhariwal had, throughout a debate within the Assembly, nearly accepted that the clips had been shared by Sharma.
Defending the CM’s OSD, he had mentioned, “If Lokesh Sharma gets something and forwards it on a WhatsApp group, what sin has he committed? Don’t you do it too? And why shouldn’t he send?…You say he made it viral, why shouldn’t he make it viral? You say that Lokesh Sharma made the clippings. Give evidence.”
Days later, Shekhawat lodged an FIR towards Sharma in Delhi.