Snoopgate

The Snoopgate controversy was an Indian political scandal concerning the illegal surveillance of a young woman using various state police and intelligence institutions in Gujarat. The details of the scandal came to light in November 2013, when the Indian investigative news website Cobrapost along with the website Gulail released tapes titled The Stalkers. ^[1] Audio tapes reveal Amit Shah, the Home Minister of Gujarat, ordered illegal surveillance of a young woman from Bangalore under instruction from an unnamed saheb, or boss. The police followed her inside malls, restaurants, gyms, and tracked her scheduled flights, hotel bookings, and visits to her mother at a hospital. The Indian National Congress alleged that the saheb was Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the chief minister of Gujarat.^[2]

Cobrapost claims that the recorded telephonic conversations was given by Gujarat IPS officer G.L. Singhal, who is an accused in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case (Ishrat was killed, along with three others, by Gujarat Police in 2004) to the Central Bureau of Investigation. The audio tapes reveals how three key wings of the Gujarat Police − the State Intelligence Bureau, also known as CID Intelligence, the Crime Branch and the Anti-Terrorism Squad (India) – misused their powers to stalk an unmarried young woman from Bangalore, who had her parents staying in Gujarat.^{[1] [3]}

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