Pegasus In India: Will The Truth Ever Come Out?
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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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2022-02-04 06:07:34
About the Author
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
View all posts by this Author
When the Pegasus spyware issue first surfaced, it was alleged that the phones of a good number of opposition leaders, journalists, bureaucrats, businessmen and social activists were illegally hacked using the spyware. Since it was officially known that Pegasus was sold only to governments or government authorized agencies, the allegation was that the Centre had used the spyware illegally to snoop on people who opposed it. The Centre did not help matter by being evasive and the opposition stalled Parliament demanding answers.
But now that the Supreme Court has appointed a panel to probe the allegations and the panel has asked those who suspect that their phones were hacked to come forward and depose before it and submit their phones for checking, just two persons have submitted their phones and of them, only one has recorded his statement. Eight others who recorded statements via video conferencing have not deposited their phones.
What does one make of this? The Supreme Court-appointed panel includes legal and technical experts who are mandated to look into the matter from all angles and decide whether the allegations are true. The strongest piece of evidence in this respect would be the targeted mobile phone that would enable the technical experts to find out whether it was compromised and whether Pegasus was the spyware used to do so. Acting upon the findings, the Supreme Court would be better placed to get to the bottom of the matter.
There are too many questions in the Pegasus case that have not been answered by the Centre. But the opposition is making the mistake of trying to corner the government only politically. A simultaneous, and concerted, attempt to corner it legally by making people depose before the panel and submit their phones for examination would yield better results. But politicians are more adept at scoring points for public consumption rather than bringing issues to closure. That is what is happening in the Pegasus case. The people of the country will never know the answers if the opposition does not change it attitude.
It seems that the opposition is actually not interested in doing so. It is more interested in taking up reports published in foreign newspapers to demand answers from the government and create a ruckus in Parliament to prevent official work rather than cooperate with the panel and allow a calibrated and techno-legal inquiry into the matter. If people think that the government snooped illegally on its own citizens using Pegasus, they should come forward and help the Supreme Court, through the panel, to find out the truth. The political fight will be incomplete without proper techno-legal backing.
