SC Appointed Panel Still Waiting For Alleged Victims Of Pegasus Spyware To Produce Their Phones For Investigation

The Supreme Court of India (SC) in October last year while hearing the Pegasus issue had constituted a Technical Committee under former SC judge R V Raveendran to investigate, among other things, the allegation that the government had used the advanced Israeli spyware to snoop of its citizens.

A petition was filed in the apex court after a report by French media nonprofit, Forbidden Stories, and Amnesty International in July 2021 alleged that the software had been used to conduct surveillance on about 300 Indians, including two serving Cabinet ministers, three Opposition leaders, a Constitutional authority, government officials, scientists, and about 40 journalists.

The Wire reported that an investigation of leaked data by itself and its media partners on the Pegasus Project showed that Prashant Kishor was hacked by the spyware and Mamata Banerjee's nephew was also selected as a potential snoop target.

The report led to the allegations that the centre used Israeli software Pegasus to spy on the citizens. Pegasus is a highly-advanced spyware that can gain access to someone’s cellphone after user clicks a link sent by it, or even with a missed call. After installing itself stealthily, Pegasus begins to contact control servers which allow it to send commands to gather data from the infected device.

The Israeli cyber arms firm NSO Group which developed Pegasus says on its website, “NSO products are used exclusively by government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to fight crime and terror.” The NSO Group had rejected the findings of the abovementioned report. At the time, the Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw told the Parliament the following:

One, the publishers of the report themselves state that they cannot say if the numbers in the published list were under surveillance; two, the company whose technology was allegedly used has denied these claims out rightly; and, three, the time tested processes in our country are well-established to ensure that unauthorised surveillance does not occur.

The Supreme Court appointed committee had issued a public notice on 2 January this year calling upon all the citizens who suspected their mobile devices to have been hacked/infected/compromised by the Pegasus software to contact the Technical Committee.

More than a month since this notice, only two members have submitted their mobile devices for the Committee, one of them being J Gopikrishnan, a Special Correspondent for The Pioneer. The Committee has again invited the aggrieved members to contact the committee in a public notice released on 3 February.

The notice asks the aggrieved persons to contact the Committee with reasons why they believe their device to be infected. It also asks the general public to contact the Committee in case they have any relevant information with their name, address and contact details.