‘Allegations are serious, if correct’: SC on Pegasus spyware snooping

The Supreme Court on Thursday said that allegations on Pegasus pry are serious if the published media reports are true.

The Supreme Court on Thursday said that allegations on Pegasus pry are serious if the published media reports are true. This was announced while hearing a batch of pleas that approached an independent probe into the snooping matter.

A bench lead by Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justice Surya Kant brought about interrogations at the outset from senior counsel Kapil Sibal, a representative for the Editors Guild of India and other senior journalists N Ram and Sashi Kumar.

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“Before going into all that, we have certain questions. No doubt, the allegations are serious, if the reports are true,” the CJI observed and expressed concerns regarding issues that had existed since 2019. “Reports of snooping came to light in 2019. I do not know whether any efforts were made to get more information,” the CJI added.

The top court will only hear primary details of each case and not go in-depth about it as many people complained of phone interception. Such complaints can be filed under the Telegraph Act, the top court added.

“I can explain. We do not have the access to many materials. The petitions have information about 10 cases of direct infiltration into phones,” Sibal asserted.

The hearing is contiguously on for the nine petitions, including a petition by the Editors Guild of India and independent probe requests filed by the senior journalists into the Pegasus snoop gate issue.

These alleged reports of pry upheld phishing of information of eminent citizens, politicians and scribes by Israeli firm NSO’s spyware Pegasus.

An international media consortium has delineated that about 300 verified Indian mobile phone numbers were on the list of probable targets for surveillance using the Pegasus spyware.