NEW DELHI: The trail of those who leaked the Niira Radia tapes could have been lost forever had not the Supreme Court decided to keep a copy with itself. The Centre on Thursday informed the Supreme Court that it has destroyed the entire Radia tapes, publication of excerpts from which threw the spotlight on ways of doing business as well as the tendency of security agencies to violate privacy of citizens.

The government said under Rule 419(A) of Indian Telegraph Rules, the intercepting agency was mandated to maintain and safely keep the intercepts for six months and thereafter destroy them if no action was required to be taken on the basis of the contents of the intercepts. The Radia intercepts were destroyed as no action was required to be taken on the tapes.

After examining the report of an inter-ministerial committee, a bench of Justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhay said, “The gist of the report is that they say it is very difficult for them to trace who leaked it.”

“Everything has been destroyed, including the original records and that no records are with them,” the bench said, quoting the report on the fate of the Radia tapes, which surfaced first in snatches on the internet before finding their way into magazines and newspapers.

The destruction of tapes would have meant the loss of the conversations between an array of protagonists from diverse fields whose conversations kept many quarters engrossed, but for the SC. The court had while hearing the case ordered for copies of intercepts to be kept with its registry. This is the only authentic version of the tapes available.

While expressing surprise over the destruction of tapes, Prashant Bhushan, counsel for NGO ‘Centre for Public Interest Litigation’, said it was good that the Supreme Court had directed the government to deposit copies of each intercept with its Registry.

Bhushan also contested the justification put forward by the government -- that no further action was required on the tapes -- for destroying the intercepts. The counsel said the intercepts of private conversations should be distinguished from those which pointed to a conspiracy for corruption or to commit a crime and they should be preserved for investigation.

The leak of the tapes which were supposed to be in the safe custody of the income tax department had raised serious questions about the regard for privacy of citizens among government agencies, as well as their handling of information gathered for the purpose of investigation. Reacting to the furore that followed the leak of the tapes, the I-T department washed its hands off the matter, disclaiming its responsibility while underlining that it had shared the information with other agencies as well.

The case lies at the intersection of the dueling considerations of nation’s security and citizen’s right to privacy. The I-T department tapped the telephones of Radia, a corporate lobbyist who has since wound up her business, on the basis of a complaint received by the finance ministry. It got the home ministry’s nod to intercept Radia’s conversations first for 120 days beginning August 20, 2008. It secured a fresh nod in May 2009.

Of the 5,851 call intercepts detailed in the Radia tapes, which had been handed over by the I-T department to CBI on November 26, 2009 for a detailed investigation into the 2G spectrum scam, many were of a private nature.

Tata group head Ratan Tata had moved the Supreme Court seeking protection of his right to privacy after a few intercepted private conversations between him and Radia were published in a magazine. He had sought an inquiry into who had leaked the excerpts from the intercepts and wanted a foolproof mechanism put in place to guard against such indiscriminate invasion into a citizen’s privacy.

After Tata’s counsel, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, concluded his arguments, the bench asked Centre’s counsel Padmalakshmi Nigam to hand over the sealed cover report of the inter-ministerial committee.

Earlier, Rohatgi contended that his client (Ratan Tata) wanted the petition to be treated as a PIL by the court for laying down guidelines to balance the media’s right to freedom of expression with individual’s right to privacy to stop indiscriminate publication of private conversations without verifying its veracity.

But the court said given the situation in the country at present, “the freedom of press today is more important than yesteryears. There are aberrations but larger public interest must outweigh private interest”.

Arguments from the government side by additional solicitor general Indira Jaising on Tata’s petition will continue on Tuesday.

dhananjay.mahapatra@timesgroup.com