Plea in SC seeks court-monitored probe into Pegasus snooping scandal

A PIL has been moved in the Supreme Court seeking a court-monitored SIT probe into the Pegasus snooping scandal, claiming it is the biggest crime committed in the Republic of India by the ruling party for their personal and political vested interests.

The plea, filed by advocate M L Sharma, has claimed the snooping scandal is an attack on the Indian democracy.

The plea said: "Pegasus scandal is a matter of grave concern and an attack on the Indian democracy, country's security and judiciary. The widespread use of surveillance is morally disfiguring. National security implications of this software are huge”.

Read | Pegasus spyware: Has national security been compromised?

Insisting for a court-monitored probe, the plea contended that the scandal involved issues concerning national security and judicial independence.

"Privacy is not about the wish to hide, as is often asserted. It is about having a space of one’s own where our thoughts and being are not the instrument of someone else’s purposes. It is an essential component of dignity and agency," the plea contended.

The plea further argued that it is a question whether buying of Pegasus software by central government violated Articles 266(3), 267(2) and 283(2) of the Constitution and attracted the rigour of 408, 409 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code and other provisions of the Information Technology and the Official Secrets Act.

Sharma's present PIL listed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his cabinet colleagues and the Central Bureau of Investigation as the respondents.

Read | Govts in denial, Amnesty 'stands by Pegasus findings'

The plea asked if the Constitution allowed Prime Minister and his ministers to snoop citizens of India for their vested political interest.

Maintaining that Pegasus is not just surveillance tool but a cyber weapon unleashed on Indian polity, it said, "The Supreme Court could force the government to come clean on the narrow issue of the use of Pegasus in India, or the existence of NSO contracts."

Earlier, Sharma had PILs in several sensational matters such as Rafale deal, Article 370, Hyderabad police encounter and coal block allocation scam.

Pegasus made by the Israeli software firm NSO Group, can infect smartphones without users' knowledge and access virtually all their data.

According to a news reports, the woman staffer who made sexual harassment allegations against the former Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and some of her family members were on the list, as the potential targets of Pegasus snooping. Besides, several opposition leaders, even Cabinet ministers, activists, and journalists were in the list.