Pegasus offered to Bengal government: Mamata Banerjee

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has said that her government was offered Pegasus spyware by its manufacturers three years ago, but it declined the offer. Pegasus is a hacking software developed and marketed by Israel's NSO Group and licensed to government agencies around the world. The spyware has the capability to infect phones and extract messages, photos, emails, record calls and even activate microphones of phones.

"We received the offer to purchase Pegasus spyware. However, we declined it as we believe that Pegasus can only be used for security of the country, not as an instrument of snooping on judges and politicians," Banerjee said in Kolkata on Thursday.

"They came to our police department. They demanded Rs 25 crore. I said, 'we don't want to buy such thing. If it was for tracking anti-national activities and for security, it would have been different. But it is used for political reasons; it's used against officials and judges, which is not acceptable," she said.


The Supreme Court has constituted a panel to study allegations of an international consortium of 17 media outlets that Pegasus was used in India against politicians, judges, journalists and others. Phones of national Opposition leaders, judges, civil society members and journalists have been allegedly spied on, according to the consortium's findings.