Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Aug 25: A CJI-led bench was informed on Thursday by a panel the Supreme Court established to look into the Pegasus eavesdropping issue that it had not discovered any concrete evidence that the spyware was present in the 29 mobile phones it had examined.
Five phones were discovered to be infected with malware through forensic investigation, but the panel ruled that it was unclear if Pegasus was to blame.
“We are concerned about technical committee 29 phones were given… in 5 phones some malware was found but the technical committee says it cannot be said to be Pegasus. They say it cannot be said to be Pegasus,” the bench remarked.
CJI NV Ramana highlighted that the government was uncooperative with the committee and repeated its prior position of not disclosing whether it used Pegasus for spying on citizens while taking into account the panel’s sealed report.
The committee was established to look into claims that the Pegasus malware was being used to spy on journalists, politicians, and activists. The committee is led by former Supreme Court judge RV Raveendran. It had previously in July given its final report.
After four weeks, the Pegasus spying case will now be heard. The registry will announce the following hearing date.
Notably, following allegations that over 300 verified mobile phone numbers, including those of two Union ministers, more than 40 journalists, three opposition leaders, activists, and one sitting judge in India, may have been the target of hacking through the Israeli spyware Pegasus, an international media consortium launched an investigation.
The IT ministry stated that there had not been any “unauthorised surveillance,” which was a denial of the charges of spying by the federal government.
