Supreme Court Appoints Probe Committee In The Pegasus Case
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-10-28 08:22:02
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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The Centre's excuse of raising the spectre of national security in avoiding filing a detailed affidavit on the Pegasus issue in the Supreme Court has not worked. Saying that the government cannot be given a free pass every time it raised such concerns, the court said that it must prove and justify how such concerns prevent it from disclosing facts that impact the privacy of a huge number of citizens. Since the government was not making any pertinent disclosures on the issue, the Supreme Court appointed a three-member probe committee headed by Justice R V Raveendran, a retired judge of the apex court. The other members of the committee are former IPS officer Alok Joshi and cybersecurity expert Sundeep Oberoi. A tech team consisting of Naveen Kumar Choudhary, professor of cybersecurity and digital forensics, Prabhakaran P, professor of computer science and Ashwin Anil Gumaste, from IIT-Bombay will assist the committee.
The court was scathing in its remark against the government for not taking up the matter seriously. It said that although the right to privacy is not absolute. It is "directly infringed when there is surveillance or spying done on an individual, either by the State or an external agency. In a democratic country governed by the rule of law, indiscriminate spying on individuals cannot be allowed except with sufficient safeguards". It also said that such spying had a "chilling effect" of the freedom of press and was an "assault" on its "public-watchdog" role. The court opined that the judiciary cannot be a "mute spectator" at "the mere invocation of national security by the State".
The Centre does not understand the simple issue involved in the case or is deliberately trying to avoid it. No one is denying that the government has the right to spy on people if national security is involved. But this right is not absolute and there are statutory safeguards inbuilt in law which the government must follow at all times. Permissions have to be taken by officers needing to spy on individuals and granted by the appropriate authority, records have to be kept and the need for such surveillance has to be recorded and justified. In short, due process has to be followed. This is what is being demanded of the Centre in the Pegasus case. National interest demands that the government come clean on three things - one, whether it, or any of its agencies, purchased the Pegasus software; two, if it was purchased, was it used and if so, against whom and three, was due process followed in authorizing such use.
If the government was so concerned about national security, instead of filing a detailed affidavit in open court it could have sought permission from the court to file its response in a sealed cover for the sole consideration of the judges on the bench. That would have allowed it to explain its position and would have also quashed the belief that it had something to hide. But not doing so has resulted in the court appointing the probe committee. It is hoped that committee gets to the bottom of the issue and finds out whether Pegasus was indeed used to spy on people in India; whether the government or any of its agencies had used it and if not, whether any external agency had used it in India. Most importantly, it must find out that if due process was followed in case the software was used by the government or any of its agencies.
