Opposition Leaders Praful Patel, Santosh Bharatiya Also Pegasus Targets, Say Reports
New Delhi: A day after WhatsApp confirmed that the Israeli spyware Pegasus had misused its platform to spy on multiple people across the world, including many lawyers, human rights activists and journalists in India, it appears now that opposition leaders too may have been targeted.
Hindustan Times has reported that former Union minister and Nationalist Congress Party leader Praful Patel and former Lok Sabha Janata Dal MP Santosh Bharatiya, among others, were also in the radar. According to a WhatsApp official who spoke to the daily, the company has identified 41 people in India whose phones were hacked.
“Of these, 21 were journalists, lawyers and activists, this person said, asking not to be named,” HT reported.
Patel was alerted about the spyware on his phone, the company official said but the NCP leader does not remember getting the message. “It’s possible that many did not pay heed to the message,” the WhatsApp official said, adding that at least one of Patel’s phones was targeted by the Israeli spyware.
The Enforcement Directorate had recently summoned Praful Patel for questioning in a Prevention of Money Laundering Act case, over alleged connections with late Mumbai don Iqbal Mirchi.
Bharatiya, who is currently the editor of Hindi digital magazine Chauthi Duniya, confirmed that he received messages from WhatsApp alerting him that his phone had been compromised. But he ignored the messages, thinking they were spam.
He told HT that he wasn’t aware of either the Citizen Lab, the firm which exposed the scandal, or the authenticity of WhatsApp’s messages. “I am a Hindi journalist, with little knowledge of how these technologies work. I don’t know why I was even targeted,” he said.
Also read: Israeli Spyware: India Turns to WhatsApp For Answers, But What Should We Really Be Asking?
Amidst a backlash from civil society, Union information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that the government has asked WhatsApp for an explanatory report.
The ministry of home affairs said in a statement that “the government of India operates strictly as per provisions of law and laid down protocols” and that “there are adequate safeguards to ensure that no innocent citizen is harassed or his privacy breached.”
However, the opposition are already up in arms against the Centre, given the fact that the Israeli NSO group, which developed the spyware, has said that it provided the technology only to licensed government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to help them fight terrorism and serious crime.
“The government seeking WhatsApp’s response on who bought Pegasus to spy on Indian citizens, is like Modi asking Dassault who made money on the sale of RAFALE jets to India! (sic),” former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Twitter.
His sister and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra too tweeted on the possibility of an enormous scandal in this regard.
This article went live on November first, two thousand nineteen, at nineteen minutes past six in the evening.If the BJP or the government has engaged Israeli agencies to snoop into the phones of journalists, lawyers, activists and politicians, it is a gross violation of human rights and a scandal with grave ramifications on national security. Waiting for the government’s response.
— Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (@priyankagandhi) November 1, 2019
The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
