Pegasus used against Indian journalists and activists; government denies

An investigation by The Washington Post and 16 media organisations led by the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories has claimed that military-grade spyware leased by the Israeli firm NSO Group to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals, was deployed to illegally access smartphones of journalists, human rights activists and business executives across the world including India.

Details put out by The Guardian, one of the media partners in the project, states that 38 Indian journalists were targeted for specific surveillance using NSO software Pegasus, which first hit headlines in 2019 for similar reasons. Also, some activists have allegedly been targeted.

The Government, which denied use of Pegasus by any official agency then, reaffirmed its position this time too in its official response to queries by The Washington Post. "Each case of interception, monitoring, and decryption is approved by the competent authority and there is an established oversight mechanism in the form of a review committee headed by the Union Cabinet Secretary.The allegations regarding government surveillance on specific people have no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever.” In light of this, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor raised the question if Pegasus was being used by China or Pakistan to “snoop on prominent Indian citizens”, he posted on Twitter, adding: "Shouldn't the authorities call for an independent investigation?"


Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International claim to have gained access to a list of more than 50,000 numbers and shared it with the news organisations fir further investigation. Amnesty’s Security Lab did forensic examination of the phones, the only way to confirm they were infected by Pegasus.