July 17, 2026

Interesting Turn In Pegasus Case As Centre Cites National Security

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-09-13 11:44:07

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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

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The Pegasus snooping scandal took another interesting turn in the Supreme Court today after the government declined to file a full affidavit, as ordered by the court, citing national security. The government was of the view that if it filed a detailed affidavit, terrorists would come to know which software was being used to track their conversations and it would have an adverse impact on national security.

But the bench was not impressed with this logic. It impressed upon the government that the matter was of breach of privacy of private citizens, including prominent personalities, who had complained that their phones were hacked using Pegasus. The court wanted to know if at all the software was used for such purpose and if so, by which authority and whether that authority had the necessary permissions as per law. The bench said that filing an affidavit on the above subject matter would not impact national security. In short, the bench was of the view that the government was skirting the issue.

The court then went ahead and reserved interim orders that it will announce in the next few days. It told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that it was open to the Centre filing the affidavit as sought by the court within that time, or else the orders will have to be complied with. It is now upon the Centre to decide whether it wants to come clean on its own or let the Supreme Court force it to disclose the fact related to the matter through a judicial fiat.

The Centre has adopted a wrong stance in the issue since the beginning. Till now, it has not even acknowledged whether any of its agencies has purchased the software, let alone disclosing which agency has it and how it is using it. Since Pegasus is advanced software that does need physical access to the target phone and the person under surveillance does not normally get any inkling about the hacking, it can easily be used to target those whom the government feels are opposed to it. Since India is not a police state and snooping on private citizens is not normally allowed under law, the government has a lot to answer. The Supreme Court will ensure that the public gets all the answers.