Leader of the Congress party Rahul Gandhi was also a potential surveillance target in leaked phone data, adding him to the list of as many as 300 prominent leaders, journalists and activists whose numbers were found on a leaked database of targets for hacking that used Israeli spyware 'Pegasus', a report by the Guardian said on July 19.
In the midst of the heated West Bengal assembly election, the phone of poll strategist Prashant Kishor was broken into using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, according to digital forensics conducted by Amnesty International’s Security Lab, news portal the Wire reported on July 19.
Another report by The Wire said phone numbers of Ashwini Vaishnaw, newly-inducted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as his minister of communications, electronics and information technology, and railways, and Prahlad Singh Patel, minister of state for Jal Shakti, or water, were among the 300 verified Indian numbers listed as potential targets for surveillance during 2017-2019 by a client of the Israel-based NSO group.
Vaishnaw defended the government in Lok Sabha on July 19 calling the report 'sensationalism and without substance.'
As per another report by the Guardian, two numbers identified as belonging to Rahul Gandhi were chosen as candidates for potential surveillance. This was for the period during the vote as well as the months that followed by NSO, whose spying tool 'Pegasus' allows customers to infiltrate mobile phones and monitor messages, camera feeds and microphones.
Numbers belonging to at least five of Rahul Gandhi's closest friends and other Congress party officials were also noted as potential targets for surveillance using the spyware, a leaked list of potential targets selected by NSO customers revealed.
This data was seen and accessed by the nonprofit journalism organisation Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International and shared with the Guardian and other media outlets as part of the Pegasus project.
Rahul Gandhi was unable to provide the device he used at the time of examination, as he changes his handset frequently to avoid surveillance, the report said.
Gandhi was not the only one who was on the list for potential surveillance. Three phone numbers belonging to the SC staffer who accused former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment in April 2019 were selected as potential targets for surveillance by an official – but unidentified – Indian agency, according to the Wire report
As per the report, a staffer involved in the case where Gogoi was accused of sexual harassment was fired in 2018 after she refused the judge's advances. A few days after her recording of allegations in a sworn testimonial on April 20, 2019, she was marked as a person of interest, an analysis of a leaked list of phone numbers accessed by French media non-profit Forbidden Stories showed.
These records also showed that during the week of her allegations against the former CJI coming to light, eight other phone numbers belonging to her husband and two of his brothers were also marked as possible candidates for surveillance.
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