The Supreme Court Thursday allowed custodial interrogation of former Telangana police intelligence bureau head T Prabhakar Rao in the illegal phone-tapping case and asked him to surrender in Hyderabad Friday.A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and R Mahadevan asked him to surrender by 11 am at the Jubilee Hills Police Station.“In modification of our earlier orders, pending further consideration of this Special Leave Petition, we direct the petitioner to surrender before Sri P Venkatgiri, ACP, SIT, Jubilee Hills Police Station, Hyderabad, on 12.12.2025 by 11:00 AM for the purpose of custodial interrogation. This is for the purpose of further investigation into the offences alleged against the petitioner herein in accordance with law,” the bench ordered. “Liberty is reserved to the petitioner herein to have food from his home as well as medication regularly during the interregnum period,” it added.Hearing his anticipatory bail plea, the court had earlier protected him from arrest and asked him to provide the correct ID and password for his iCloud and other cloud backups to the investigating agency.Must Read | SC allows issuance Scheduled Caste certificate for girl based on mother’s caste: What does the law say?However, on Thursday, the state said that he reset passwords for only two out of five iCloud accounts. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, also appearing for the state, said Rao had destroyed the data along with the hard disks and dumped them in a river.The court, meanwhile, clarified that it has not dismissed the anticipatory bail, but kept it pending. “We are not dismissing it. We are just saying that let there be an effective investigation, interrogation whatever minus any physical torture or hardship. We are just trying to balance the interest of the petitioner and at the same time, the investigation,” Justice Nagarathna added.Appearing for Rao, Senior Advocate Ranjit Kumar said one of the accounts could not be reset because the US mobile number associated with it was deactivated and could not be reactivated.Story continues below this adJustice Mahadevan said, “You removed almost 26 hard drives. When you were directed to give the password you said you forgot everything. Later, you were able to remember everything. When they (probe agencies) accessed it nothing was available. Ten years of data collected, nothing was available. Is it not a crime?”Also Read | Explained: Law on phone-tapping, and two High Court rulingsKumar, however, said the data was deleted following official protocols on the order of the Review Committee as the information was sensitive. He said that the minutes of the Review Committee meeting held on December 2, 2023, would establish this.Senior Advocate Sidharth Luthra, who also appeared for the state, said that the investigators were unable to “open” some email addresses given by Rao.The court will hear Rao’s petition next on December 19.Story continues below this adThe case pertains to the period right before the 2023 Telangana Assembly elections when phones of at least 600 individuals were allegedly tapped.