Pegasus: Rahul Gandhi, Prashant Kishor among those allegedly targeted

Other top targets in India included Gagandeep Kang, one of India's eminent medical scientists, former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa and several others

At least two phone numbers of top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi were reportedly selected for surveillance through Pegasus spyware, the Guardian --- part of the global media consortium that led an investigation into how the Israeli spyware was used to target journalists, activists and govt officials worldwide -- reported.

Those selected included not only Gandhi but some of his staff members and close friends, the investigation revealed.

Other top targets in India included political advisor Prashant Kishor, who helped Mamata Banerjee win Bengal elections, Gagandeep Kang, a professor at the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratory of Christian Medical College, Vellore, and one of India's leading medical scientists, former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa, founder of key election watchdog Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) Jagdeep Chhokhar, and several others. In the case of Prashant Kishor, a forensic analysis reportedly showed his phone was compromised as recently as July 14.

Also on the list was the personal secretary to Vasundhara Raje Scindia, when she was the BJP's chief minister in Rajasthan, and Sanjay Kachroo, who worked as an officer on special duty (OSD) for Smriti Irani in her first years as a Union minister in the Modi government from 2014-2015, it said.

Other junior politicians linked to the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's leader, Pravin Togadia are other individuals whose numbers figure in the database.

The leaked data also includes Hari Menon, the India head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and at least one other foundation employee, who were selected in mid 2019.

Another big name in the list was India's newly-appointed IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and another union minister, Prahlad Singh Patel. Interestingly, earlier during the day, Vaishnaw, dismissed media reports on the use of Pegasus software to snoop on journalists. He said the allegations levelled just ahead of the Monsoon session of Parliament are aimed at maligning Indian democracy.

In a suo motu statement in Lok Sabha, Vaishnaw said that with several checks and balances being in place, "any sort of illegal surveillance" by unauthorised persons is not possible in India.

The Wire news portal, in the second part of its revelations from the international collaborative investigation called the Pegasus Project, reported that the phone number of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew and TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee and 11 phone numbers belonging to the Supreme Court staffer and her close relatives, who accused former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment in April 2019, were selected as targets for surveillance.

Releasing the fresh tranche of investigation, The Wire said at least two mobile phone accounts used by former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi were listed as potential targets by "an official Indian client of the Israeli surveillance technology vendor, NSO Group".

The forensic inspection of a cross-section of phones drawn from this list by Amnesty International's technical lab has confirmed the presence of Pegasus spyware in as many as 37 instruments, 10 of which are in India.

Gandhi's phones are not among those examined as he no longer has the handsets he used at the time that his numbers appear to have been selected for targeting - from mid-2018 to mid-2019, the report said. In the absence of forensics, it is not possible to conclusively establish whether Pegasus was deployed against Gandhi, it said.

Gandhi told The Wire that he had received suspicious WhatsApp messages in the past one of the known vectors for a spyware hack and frequently changed numbers and instruments so as to make it a little harder for them to target him.

Asked for his reaction to the news that he had been placed on a list of potential targets for hacking, Gandhi told The Wire, "Targeted surveillance of the type you describe whether in regard to me, other leaders of the opposition or indeed any law-abiding citizen of India is illegal and deplorable."

"If your information is correct, the scale and nature of surveillance you describe goes beyond an attack on the privacy of individuals. It is an attack on the democratic foundations of our country. It must be thoroughly investigated and those responsible be identified and punished," the former Congress chief said.

Such was the apparent interest in Gandhi that the numbers of five of his social friends and acquaintances were also placed on the list of potential targets, the report said.

The Congress, in its statement, alleged the government was the "deployer and executor of the snooping and spying racket through Israeli surveillance software Pegasus".

Randeep Surjewala, the party's main spokesperson, claimed that the government is listening to the bedroom conversations of people.

"Prime Minister and Home Minister are involved in snooping on Opposition leaders including Rahul Gandhi, journalists and even Union ministers. Before a probe, Amit Shah should resign and an inquiry should be conducted against Modi," Leader of Opposition (LoP) in Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge said.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the matter using the hashtag "Pegasus".

The BJP, meanwhile, hit out at the Congress over its attack on the central government, and claimed that there is not a "shred of evidence" to link either the ruling party or the Modi dispensation with the matter.

Addressing a press conference, senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad also questioned the credentials of those behind the story, alleging that The Wire, the news portal which broke it in India, had been earlier associated with stories which have been found to be "incorrect" while Amnesty International has a declared "anti-India" agenda in many ways.

On Sunday, the global consortium led by the Washington Post, the Guardian, and number of other media organisations revealed that Israeli spyware was used to allegedly compromise 300 mobile phone numbers in India. These included numbers of two serving Union ministers, three Opposition leaders, one constitutional authority, current and former heads of security organisations, administrators and 40 senior journalists and activists.

The Post reported that more than 1,000 phone numbers in India appeared on the list. However, the consortium could only verify the identities of the people associated with more than 300 of the numbers in India.

The data was accessed by the non-profit journalism organisation Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International and shared with the global media consortium as part of the Pegasus project.

The spyware that infiltrated phones is called Pegasus. It unlocks critical information of the target’s mobile phone without even any inducement from the user. The spyware developed by NSO Group, an Israeli firm says, it sells the spyware exclusively to government agencies to combat terrorism and other serious crimes.