[Pegasus] Supreme Court grants more time to technical committee to submit its report

In the Pegasus hearing, the Supreme Court on Friday granted the Court appointed technical committee time until May end to submit its report in the batch of petitions related to the Pegasus issue.

The Court was of the opinion that the interim report submitted by the technical committee has said that 29 mobile phones investigated which had been "infected" with the malware. The committee has also issued notice to agencies and journalists in connection with the issue.

A bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana, Justice Surya Kant, and Justice Hima Kohli said that "there are two aspects to the matter, one is related to the malware and investigation of the mobile phones, whereas, the other aspect is of amendments in the laws and considering recommendation and suggestions. The first part has been done, however, the second one is left."

The Court was hearing a batch of petitions seeking a court-monitored probe by the Special Investigation Team into the reports of alleged snooping using Israeli spyware Pegasus.

The bench has directed the Technical Committee to submit its report to the supervising judge, Justice RV Raveendran, in furtherance of this the supervising judge will submit its report within 4 weeks thereafter.

However, the Court denied the request made by Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal to make the report public stating that it is an interim report.

Earlier, The Supreme Court had appointed a committee headed by Justice RV Raveendran (Retired SC Judge), while rejecting the plea of the Union of India to allow them to appoint an Expert Committee for the purposes of investigating the allegations.

Before this, the Centre had denied all allegations stating that the petitions are based on “conjectures and surmises or on other unsubstantiated media reports or uncorroborated material”. It has been added that in order to “dispel false narratives by certain vested interests,” the Union of India will constitute a Committee of Experts, which will go into all aspects of the issue.

Later, Refusing to file an affidavit on the specific use of Pegasus spyware software against civil society members and journalists, the Centre told the Supreme Court through Solicitor General of India (SGI) Tushar Mehta that, it has "filed an affidavit stating that in view of prevailing statutes, we are in compliance" and that an inquiry committee would be set up to look into the matter. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta also told the court that in the interest of national security, the matter could not be made a part of "public discourse".

On 19th July 2021, a consortium of 17 international media organizations including an Indian news portal published an investigation around a leaked list of phone numbers from across the world, named the Pegasus Project.

These numbers in the leaked list are allegedly the “target list” of phones hacked /to be hacked by the Pegasus spyware product sold by Israel’s NSO Group.

The target list is said to contain the numbers of 136 prominent politicians, judges, journalists, businessmen, rights activists, etc.

NSO Group, which owns ‘Pegasus Spyware’, was sued by WhatsApp and Facebook in 2019 before the US Californian Court for exploiting its platform to carry out remote surveillance. NSO claimed sovereign immunity as its products were sold only to governments and state agencies. However, The Californian Court ruled in favor of WhatsApp and dismissed NSO’s claim.

Advocate Sharma has stated in his plea that “the Pegasus scandal is a matter of grave concern and a serious attack upon Indian democracy, judiciary and country security. The widespread and unaccountable use of surveillance is morally disfiguring.”

He further added, “Privacy is not about the wish to hide, as is often asserted. It is about having a space of one’s own where our thoughts and being are not the instruments of someone else’s purposes.”

“Pegasus is not just a surveillance tool. It is a cyber weapon being unleashed on the Indian polity. Even if authorized (which is doubtful), the use of Pegasus poses a national security risk.” – stated the plea

Case Title: ML Sharma v. PM | N. Ram v. UOI | Editors Guild of India v. UOI