Pegasus spyware: Modi ministers, opposition leaders and journalists targeted, says report

Journalists, opposition leaders, a constitutional authority, businesspersons and two serving ministers: These are some of the targets of a purported surveillance operation using the Pegasus spyware, developed by the Israeli NSO Group, as revealed by a joint media investigation.

The curtain has been raised on a surveillance ring of global scale. A database containing thousands of telephone numbers belonging to journalists, ministers, opposition leaders, activists and judges has been found, following a joint investigation by Paris-based media non-profit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International.

The numbers were believed to have been shared with government actors by the Israeli surveillance technology firm Pegasus. These numbers mostly belonged to ten countries: India, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

News website The Wire is among the 17 media organisations that have been working on the report, which is called Project Pegasus.

The report claims that the phone numbers found included those of “40 journalists, three major opposition figures, one constitutional authority, two serving ministers in the Narendra Modi government, current and former heads and officials of security organisations and scores of businesspersons.”

The Wire added that the number of a sitting Supreme Court judge was also in the list, but that they were unable to ascertain whether the number belongs to the judge during the time period it was compiled.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has denied “allegations regarding government surveillance on specific people”, saying these had “no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever”.