The phone numbers of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav and political strategist Prashant Kishore were listed as potential targets for hacking through Israeli spyware Pegasus, reports said. The number of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s MP nephew Abhishek Banerjee was also on the list.
Reports said at least two numbers being used by Gandhi were listed as potential targets. The list also allegedly includes numbers of his five friends and acquaintances, they said.
An international media consortium on Sunday reported that more than 300 verified mobile phone numbers, including of two serving ministers, over 40 journalists, three opposition leaders and one sitting judge besides scores of business persons and activists in India could have been targeted for hacking through the Israeli spyware sold only to government agencies.
The government, however, has dismissed allegations of any kind of surveillance on its part on specific people, saying it "has no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever".
Reacting to the media reports, Ashwini Vaishnav on Monday said such claims are an attempt to malign Indian democracy. “Those reports had no factual basis and were denied by all parties. Press reports of 18 July 2021 also appear to be an attempt to malign Indian democracy and its well-established institutions,” he said.
The Congress has demanded an independent probe into the issue involving alleged phone tapping of prominent personalities using Israeli spyware.
A database containing over 50,000 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, which shared the list of numbers with 17 media partners across the world. The investigation performed forensic tests on a small cross-section of phones associated with the leaked numbers, and revealed clear signs of targeting by Pegasus spyware in 37 phones, of which 10 are Indian.
