Hyderabad: Senior Congress leader and Telangana government advisor Mohammed Ali Shabbir on Sunday, June 14, called a viral audio clip in which he allegedly makes derogatory remarks against party colleagues “fake, doctored and politically motivated,” and vowed criminal defamation action against all those responsible for its circulation.
Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president B Mahesh Kumar Goud confirmed on Saturday, June 13, that a show-cause notice had been issued to Shabbir Ali over the clip, which surfaced online on June 12.
The audio and what it alleges
The purported recording, believed to be roughly a year old, captures a conversation between Shabbir Ali and a local party functionary from Kamareddy. In it, Ali allegedly expresses despair over being passed over for a party post and makes disparaging remarks about how Gaddam Chandrasekhar Reddy, the district Congress general secretary, secured his position.
The clip went viral after local party workers from Kamareddy posted it along with pictures of Goud, Shabbir Ali and Chandrasekhar Reddy’s wife Gaddam Indu Priya Reddy. The posts reportedly carried vulgar comments targeting Indu Priya.
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Shabbir Ali hits back
In a formal letter, the veteran leader denied the remarks outright. Citing 45 years of association with the Congress, he said those who knew him were “fully aware” that he would not make personal or disrespectful remarks against colleagues, least of all against women associated with the party.
He said he had initially held back from responding because he was weighing legal options and did not want to amplify what he termed a fabricated clip. He has since lodged a complaint with the Kamareddy Police seeking a forensic examination of the recordings.
Shabbir Ali also pointed to what he described as a calculated chain of events. He said the group backing Chandrasekhar Reddy, who joined Congress only after being suspended from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) in October 2023, had first filed complaints against other Congress leaders in Kamareddy with the party’s Disciplinary Action Committee.
Within days, the audio surfaced through “TeluguScribe,” an X handle he described as anti-Congress and affiliated with the BRS.
“This sequence cannot be treated as a coincidence,” he wrote. “It clearly points to a planned attempt to malign me, create internal friction, and weaken the Congress organisation in Kamareddy.”
కాంగ్రెస్ పార్టీ సీనియర్ నేత షబ్బీర్ అలీ సంచలన వ్యాఖ్యలుకాంగ్రెస్ పార్టీ డబ్బులకు అమ్ముడుపోయే పార్టీగా తయారైందిడబ్బులు పెట్టి, పండబెట్టి పదవులు తీసుకుంటున్నారుటీపీసీసీ అధ్యక్షుడు మహేష్ కుమార్ గౌడ్ డబ్బులకు పదవులు ఇస్తున్నాడుకాంగ్రెస్ కార్యకర్తలతో షబ్బీర్ అలీ మాట్లాడిన… pic.twitter.com/wCtpry6Tca— Telugu Scribe (@TeluguScribe) June 10, 2026
Indu Priya files complaint
Chandrasekhar Reddy’s wife Indu Priya has filed a complaint with Kamareddy Superintendent of Police M Rajesh Chandra, accusing Shabbir Ali of orchestrating social media abuse against her. She named Ali’s nephew Sheru, his son Ilyaz and a follower identified as Parvez as being responsible for spreading vulgar and false content through local WhatsApp groups.
She also flagged a Gulf-based individual named Shaikh Mukhtar as the person managing the Congress party’s social media content in Kamareddy and facilitating the attacks.
Calling Shabbir Ali “unfit to be a government advisor,” Indu Priya said she would take the matter to the party high command and, if needed, to Rahul Gandhi directly.
Fault lines run deeper
The episode has exposed a sharper divide within Telangana Congress than the audio row alone suggests.
Shabbir Ali had vacated his home constituency of Nizamabad Urban in 2023 to make way for Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, who contested from there against former chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao. Ali lost from Nizamabad Urban to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Dhanpal Suryanarayana by over 15,000 votes.
After the Congress formed the government, Shabbir Ali was reportedly asked to work in Kamareddy. But by then, Indu Priya and her husband, who had served in municipal bodies under the BRS before crossing over ahead of the 2023 polls, had already consolidated their hold over the district unit. Chandrasekhar Reddy’s appointment as general secretary in 2025 is said to have set off the current friction.
In his letter, Shabbir Ali also sought to address his standing with Goud directly, describing the TPCC chief as someone he had known for nearly four decades and regarded as a younger brother. “If Mahesh Kumar Goud Garu has felt hurt or upset after seeing these distorted media reports, I am equally pained, because a deliberate attempt is being made to create misunderstanding and distance between us,” he wrote.
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