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Supreme Court to set up committee to probe into Pegasus issue, says CJI

The top court may pass an order on pleas seeking an independent probe into Pegasus snooping matter next week
Last Updated 23 September 2021, 09:09 IST

The Supreme Court on Thursday orally observed that it will set up a technical committee to probe the allegations of snooping on citizens, particularly Opposition leaders, journalists, activists, etc. through Israel's Pegasus spyware.

A bench presided over by Chief Justice N V Ramana said that some experts have expressed their inability to join the probe due to personal reasons and an order on the committee may be passed next week.

The CJI said that the court wanted to pass orders this week. However, it was deferred as some members, who the court wanted to be part of the technical committee, had expressed personal difficulties to be on the committee.

"That is why it is taking time to constitute the technical expert committee," the CJI said hoping that the court will finalise the names of members of the technical committee soon.

The court made the oral observations to senior advocate C U Singh, who had appeared for one of the petitioners during the arguments in the matter. Singh was before the court in an unrelated matter on Thursday.

The bench, also comprising Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli, had on September 13, reserved its order on interim directions to be issued on a batch of petitions for independent probe into use of the spyware.

The Centre, on its part, had proposed to constitute an expert panel, comprising independent members, to examine the allegations. It also assured of disclosing details before the experts' panel.

However, the government had declined to file a detailed affidavit, saying use or non-use of a particular software cannot be debated in such a manner since it involved questions of national security and might alert a potential terrorist or terror organisations to develop counter measures.

The court said that it did not want any details which compromised the national security but wanted to know if any inquiry had been ordered by the government.

On July 18, an international investigative consortium reported that many Indian ministers, politicians, activists, businessmen and journalists were among the 50,000 potential targets of the Israeli company NSO Group’s phone-hacking software.

A batch of petitions, including those by advocate M L Sharma, CPI(M) MP John Brittas, N Ram, former IIM professor Jagdeep Chokkar, Narendra Mishra, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Rupesh Kumar Singh, S N M Abdi and Editors Guild of India, were filed for independent probe into the matter.

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(Published 23 September 2021, 06:20 IST)

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