U.K. police wathdog opens probe of officer in News Corp.

Britain’s police watchdog said it’s probing claims that an officer in Surrey, England, leaked information about an investigation into a schoolgirl’s murder in 2002 to News Corp.’s News of the World tabloid.

The probe began after the Independent Police Complaints Commission received a “voluntary referral” from Surrey police, the London-based regulator said today in a statement.

Revelations that the newspaper hacked into the mobile-phone voice mail of the murdered girl, Milly Dowler, forced News Corp. to shutter the 168-year-old tabloid and abandon its 7.8 billion- pound ($12.7 billion) bid for all of British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc. Sara Payne, the mother of another murdered girl, said she may also have been targeted by an investigator at News of the World.

Police and at least two parliamentary committees are investigating whether News of the World reporters bribed police and the extent to which politicians, celebrities, and murder and terror victims had their phones or computers hacked.