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New Delhi: Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi during his lecture at the prestigious University of Cambridge metioned Pegasus row that created a political stir in India couble of months ago. “A large number of political leaders have Pegasus on their phone. I myself had Pegasus on my phone. I’ve been called by Intelligence officers who say please be careful of what you say on the phone as we are recording the stuff,” the former Congress chief said.
Rahul Gandhi futher said, “Cases are registered against Opposition. I have got a number of criminal cases registered against me for the things which shouldn’t be under criminal cases.” “As Opposition, it is very difficult to communicate with people when you have this type of an assault on media and on the democratic architecture,” he added.
Several pleas were filed before the top court on snooping row by senior journalists N Ram, and Sashi Kumar, Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas of Communist Marxist Party of India (Marxist) and advocate ML Sharma, former Union minister Yashwant Sinha, RSS ideologue KN Govindacharya. Last year, The Supreme Court said the technical panel appointed by it to probe the unauthorised use of Pegasus found some malware in five mobile phones out of the 29 examined but it could not be concluded that it was due to the Israeli spyware.
After perusing the report submitted by former apex court Justice R V Raveendran, Chief Justice N V Ramana also noted that the Central government did not cooperate with the Pegasus probe. Journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, SNM Abdi, Prem Shankar Jha, Rupesh Kumar Singh, and Ipsa Shatakshi, who are reported to be on the potential list of snoop targets of Pegasus spyware, had also approached the top court along with The Editors Guild of India (EGI) among others.
Pegasus is spyware developed by the Israeli cyber-arms company NSO Group that allows operators to stealthily invade a target’s mobile device, giving them access to contacts, messages, and movement history. Supreme Court had ordered a probe into the allegations of the use of Israeli spyware by the government agencies for targeted surveillance of politicians, journalists and activists and appointed technical and supervisory committees to look into the Pegasus row after an international media consortium last year reported that over 300 verified Indian mobile phone numbers were on the list of potential targets.
NSO has been connected to a number of scandals resulting from alleged misuse by customers of its flagship Pegasus phone surveillance software.Rahul Gandhi, who is a Visiting Fellow of the Cambridge Judge Business School (Cambridge JBS), delivered the lecture to students at the university on the subject of ‘Learning to Listen in the 21st Century’ on Tuesday evening.Cambridge JBS said its MBA programme is for globally minded, successful individuals who want to understand the complexities of business and society and expressed gratitude to Gandhi for sharing his “experience and insight on global economics and policymaking”.
Gandhi is on a week-long tour of the UK and is scheduled to hold some closed-door sessions on Big Data and Democracy and India-China relations at Cambridge University. Later in the week, he will interact with representatives of the Indian Overseas Congress (IOC) UK chapter and also address an “Indian Diaspora Conference” planned over the weekend in London.
