I did not leak Radia tapes: Pillai

New Delhi, Dec 11 (IBNS): India’s Home Secretary G K Pillai on Saturday trashed allegations of leaking the intercepted phone conversations of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and blamed a section of the media for grossly misquoting him on the issue.

“My interview to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has been misunderstood and quoted out of context,” he said in a statement posted on the Home Ministry website.

In the interview published on the WSJ’s India Realtime blog on Monday, Pillai had said that the 100 odd leaked tapes of conversations between Radia and prominent Indian journalists and politicians barely scratch the surface of the stuff that will be at the heart of the 2G scam investigations.

He had said that the tapes that have come out contain only “juicy elements” meant by the leakers to “titillate” the media while the remaining 5,000-plus recordings contain the details that will actually assist investigators as they draw up formal charges against wrongdoers, the blog had reported.

A section of the media had since then referred to the interview implying Pillai had said that the exposed Radia conversations were in fact only the “tip of the iceberg” and the tapes were being leaked by him.

On Saturday, in a statement Pillai said: “Since I have neither heard nor seen the tapes, the allegations that I am leaking these tapes, at the behest of the Union Home Minister, is totally unfounded and false.”

“I wish to clarify that neither I nor the Ministry of Home Affairs had access or have any access to any of the tapes concerning the interception of the telephones of Ms. Niira Radia,” he said.

In the interview he had only stated that the interception of the telephone calls have been authorised by the Home Ministry on account of allegations concerning tax evasions and related charges, Pillai said.

This comes in on a day when Outlook magazine claimed possession of leaked tapes of 800 more intercepted conversations of the beleaguered lobbyist with Indian power-brokers.

The latest tapes have several prominent names, including Tarun Das, former chief of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

The first batch of 140 tapes were leaked three weeks ago, featuring Radia’s conversations with several heavyweights, including Tata group chairman Ratan Tata and journalists Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi.

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