Supreme Court Hearing Today On Pleas For Probe into the Pegasus Allegations

1. A two-member bench, headed by Chief Justice NV Ramana, will hear the petitions. Justice Surya Kant is the second judge on the bench
2. The Editors’ Guild of India, in its petition filed two days ago, requested the Supreme Court to seek details from the government on the spyware contract and a list of those targetted.
3. Earlier, senior journalists N Ram and Sashi Kumar had sought a Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by a sitting of former judge into the snooping allegations. Their lawyer Kapil Sibal requested the Chief Justice to list the petition, saying it has “huge ramifications on freedom and liberty”. Journalists, opposition leaders and judges were on the list of potential targets, Mr Sibal told the Chief Justice.
4. Two other petitions were filed earlier in the Supreme Court on the same case, one by CPM MP John Brittas and the other by advocate ML Sharma.
5. Mamata Banerjee has set up a commission of inquiry – consisting of retired Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Jyotirmay Bhattacharya and retired Supreme Court Justice MB Lokur – to probe the scandal.
6. The global media investigation involving several leading publications, including The Wire, has disclosed that 300 phones from India were revealed to be on the list of potential targets on the leaked database of NSO, which supplies Israeli spyware Pegasus. It is not established, however, that all the phones were hacked.
7. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, ace poll strategist Prashant Kishor, two serving Union Ministers, ex-Election Commissioner, 40 journalists among others were found to be on alleged leaked list of potential targets.
8. The Supreme Court will also hear a separate plea filed by senior journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, whose name featured in the reported list of those who were targets of alleged snooping using Pegasus, seeking directions to the centre to disclose materials with respect to investigation and authorisation linked to the purported use of spyware on his mobile.
9. Dismissing demands for a probe, the government has maintained that there has been no unauthorised interception by its agencies, adding that allegations regarding government surveillance on specific people has no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever.
10. The NSO group, which sells Pegasus to governments and government agencies only, says it is not connected to the leaked database of phone numbers. The government has said there is “no substance” in these reports.

Disclaimer:The NSO group, which owns Pegasus, admits this is spyware and is used to hack phones, but says it does business only with governments and government agencies. The Israeli company says it does not corroborate the list of potential targets reported by media companies around the world. The Indian government has said there is “no substance” to the reports of Pegasus being used by it against opposition leaders, journalists and others. NDTV cannot independently verify the authenticity of the list of those who were supposedly targeted.