Pegasus: Fresh plea in SC calls for FIR against PM Modi

In his plea, advocate Manohar Lal Sharma sought recovery of the deal money and prosecution of PM Modi

A fresh plea has been filed in the Supreme Court to take note of a news report in international media about the purchase of Isreal's Pegasus spyware and order registration of FIR against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Relying upon new "revelations" in a report by The New York Times on India having purchased Pegasus in 2017 from Israel, advocate Manohar Lal Sharma, the lead petitioner in the pending Pegasus case, approached the top court once again.

In his plea, he sought registration of the FIR, recovery of the money of the deal and prosecution of the Prime Minister.

A bench presided over by Chief Justice N V Ramana, while acting on a batch of petitions, had on October 27, 2021, formed an independent experts committee led by Justice R V Raveendran, a retired top court judge, to examine charges of snooping.

Also read: Chidambaram asks if it is 'best time to get advanced version of Pegasus' in jibe at PM Modi

“Right to privacy and freedom of speech are alleged to be impacted, which needs to be examined. The entire citizenry is affected by such allegations due to the potential chilling effect,” the court had said in its detailed order.

It had asked the experts panel to ascertain if any governmental agency had used the Pegasus spyware on the citizens of the country, and under what law, rule, guideline, protocol or lawful procedure such deployment was made.

Sharma, in his fresh application, referred to the report that claimed the Indian government had bought Pegasus Spyware from Israel in 2017 as part of a $2-billion package for weapons including a missile system.

On July 18, 2021, an international investigative consortium reported that many Indian ministers, politicians, activists, businessmen and journalists were among the 50,000 numbers that were potentially targeted by the Israeli company NSO Group’s phone hacking software.

A batch of petitions including those by advocate Sharma, CPI(M) MP John Brittas, journalist 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 an independent probe into the matter.

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