Azam Siddiqui, a divisional engineer of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) is facing tough times ever since he detected the existence of an illegal call routing racket which affected BSNL but was benefitting a private operator.

He has now approached the Supreme Court alleging harassment from BSNL which has ordered a departmental inquiry against the engineer. Earlier, a Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) directive had stopped BSNL from initiating such an inquiry. But this directive was over ruled by Delhi HC which allowed BSNL to conduct the inquiry.

The SC has sought responses from BSNL, DoT and CVC within three weeks on the issue.  

The engineer had detected an illegal call routing network 2003 when he was posted as a divisional engineer in Allahabad. He had subsequently complained to CVC in 2005. A joint investigation by CBI and DoT had found the allegations partially correct as it zeroed in on ISD calls of the private operator being routed as domestic calls through the BSNL network causing significant loss of revenue to the PSU. BSNL had also collected Rs 5 lakh fine from the private operator.