James Murdoch's hacking was 'rife' at NOTW email deleted days before investigation

London, Feb 1 (ANI): An email in which News International boss James Murdoch was informed that phone hacking was "rife" at the News of the World was deleted from his personal account days before police launched a new investigation in the matter.

Murdoch was sent a chain of emails suggesting that hacking was not restricted to a single rogue reporter.

They included one from Colin Myler, the editor of the News of the World at the time, after it emerged that a second journalist had sent an email with details of a hacked conversation.

Murdoch claimed he did not read the email in full and was unaware of the suggestion that hacking went beyond one "rogue reporter".

According to The Telegraph, its has now been disclosed by Linklaters, a law firm representing News International, that the email was deleted from Murdoch's account by an IT worker at News International 11 days before Scotland Yard launched Operation Weeting on January 15 2011.

"Murdoch's copy of the email was deleted from his mailbox by a member of News International's IT department on Jan 15 2011 as part of [an] email stabilisation and modernisation programme," John Turnbull of Linklaters said.

"Myler's copy of the email was lost from the email archive system in a hardware failure that occurred on Mar 18 2010. The email archive system was subject to many such incidents," he added.

According to the paper, the deletions meant that the email did not form part of the initial evidence sent by News International to the Metropolitan Police.

Last month, News International was accused of a "cover-up" of phone hacking evidence by a High Court judge after lawyers for phone hacking victims said the company had deleted emails. (ANI)