Supreme Court to hear Pegasus spyware case in April

The Supreme Court on Friday said that the case relating to alleged use of Pegasus spyware by the Government of India to snoop on journalists, judges, activists and others will be heard in April this year..The matter was came up before a Bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh when the Bench expressed surprise at the listing of the matter today."It is after a long time. Can it be in first week of April?" Solicitor General Tushar Mehta requested. "This is Pegasus issue. This is a large batch of cases," said Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal on behalf of various petitioners. "We will take it up sometime in April. Even we did not know this is coming up. We had ordered for this to be listed though in December," the Bench said.It then proceeded to list the case on April 22..The Court is seized of a slew of petitions seeking probe into allegations that Pegasus spyware was used by the Indian government to snoop on individuals by infecting their electronic devices like mobile phones.Israel-based spyware firm NSO is best known for its Pegasus spyware, which it claims is sold only to “vetted governments” and not to private entities, though the company does not reveal which governments it sells the controversial product to.An international consortium of news outlets, including the Indian news portal The Wire, had in 2021, released a series of reports indicating that the said the software may have been used to infect the mobile devices of several persons including Indian journalists, activists, lawyers, officials, a former Supreme Court judge and others.The reports had referred to a list of phone numbers that were selected as potential targets. Upon analysis by a team from Amnesty International, some of these numbers were found to have traces of a successful Pegasus infection, while some showed attempted infection, the reports had said.After the reports, the present petitions came to be filed before the top court.The petitioners included advocate ML Sharma, Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas, Director of Hindu Group of publications N Ram and founder of Asianet Sashi Kumar, Editors Guild of India, journalists Rupesh Kumar Singh, Ipsa Shatakshi, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, SNM Abidi and Prem Shankar Jha.The Supreme Court had then constituted the 3-member expert committee to probe the scandal..The committee headed by former Supreme Court judge, Justice RV Raveendran submitted its report to the Court in July 2022.The committee also comprised Alok Joshi (former IPS Officer) and Dr. Sundeep Oberoi, Chairman, Sub Committee in (International Organisation of Standardisation/International Electro-Technical Commission/Joint Technical Committee).In its report, the committee concluded that the spyware was not found in the twenty-nine mobile phones examined by it.The committee also said that some malware was found in 5 of the 29 devices but the same was not Pegasus.Pertinently, the committee also said that Government of India did not assist the committee in its task. The matter has not seen much progress after that. .[Read Live Coverage]