Rahul Gandhi is among the list of people who were Pegasus’ alleged targets
New Delhi:
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, poll strategist Prashant Kishor and new IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw are the big names revealed as potential targets of Israeli spyware ‘Pegasus’ in the second set of explosive revelations by The Wire today.
Here is your 10-point cheat sheet to this big story:
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In a new instalment of the Pegasus report, The Wire has said at least two mobile phone accounts used by Rahul Gandhi were among 300 verified Indian numbers listed as potential targets by an official Indian client of the Israeli surveillance technology vendor, NSO Group.
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Mr Gandhi’s numbers, which he has since given up, appear to have been selected for targeting from mid-2018 to mid-2019, when the national elections were held. In a blistering reaction, the Congress said the government was “listening to bedroom conversations”.
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The targets include two current Union Ministers, Prahlad Patel and Ashwini Vaishnaw, according to The Wire. Mr Vaishnaw, who joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet recently, is IT Minister. He appears to have been targeted for possible surveillance in 2017, when he was neither a minister nor an MP.
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Mr Vaishnaw defended the government in parliament earlier today, saying there was “no substance” behind the sensational claims. It was “no coincidence” that the news broke a day before the start of the monsoon session of parliament, he said. “A highly sensational story was published by a web portal last night. Many over-the-top allegations (were) made around this story. The press reports appeared a day before (the) monsoon session of Parliament. This can’t be a coincidence,” said IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, adding that there was “no substance” behind the claims.
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The Wire said among the names is Prashant Kishor, who played a big role in the BJP’s 2014 campaign that saw PM Modi come to power for the first time and has since worked with several political clients, mostly opposed to the BJP. Recently, he was credited with a role in the victories of Mamata Banerjee in Bengal and MK Stalin in Tamil Nadu.
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Ashok Lavasa, a former Election Commissioner, famously recorded a dissenting opinion on the election body’s ruling on complaints against PM Modi and Amit Shah during the 2019 national election campaign. He even stopped attending meetings saying “minority decisions” were being “suppressed in a manner contrary to well-established conventions observed by multi-member statutory bodies”.
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Besides key politicians, over 40 Indian journalists and a constitutional authority were also found on the database of NSO as connected to people of interest since 2016, The Wire has reported.
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The Wire’s analysis of the data shows that most of the names were targeted between 2018 and 2019, in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha general elections, but there was not enough evidence to suggest all phones had been hacked.
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The Israeli company, NSO Group, which sells Pegasus, has denied the snooping allegations, claimed that it only offers its spyware to “vetted governments” and said it was “considering a defamation lawsuit”. According to The Wire, forensic tests conducted on some phones associated with the target numbers revealed clear signs of targeting by Pegasus spyware – a job made easier if the device was an Apple iPhone.
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The report into the spying scandal is based on a leaked database accessed by Paris-based media non-profit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International that was shared with a host of publications around the world for a collaborative investigation. Most of the numbers identified in the list were geographically concentrated in 10 country clusters: India, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, The Wire reported.
