The Supreme Court is likely to set up a technical committee to sound out the snooping allegations of journalists, activists, etc., using Pegasus spyware. Chief Justice of India's Supreme Court NV Ramana said Thursday that the court will pass orders in the case next week. The CJI orally told Major Chander Uday Singh, who appears in one of Pegasus' petitions, while the latter was making mention in another matter.
The CJI said that the Court wanted to pass orders this week. However, the orders were deferred as some members of the technical committee the Court had in mind expressed personal difficulties to be part of the same. The CJI said that the Court will finalize the members of the technical committee soon and will pass orders next week. Singh said that he will inform this to Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, who is the lead counsel for the petitioners in the case.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the bench that the matter was related to national security, and hence cannot be made a subject matter of a judicial debate or public discourse. He said that the Government cannot reveal on affidavit whether it has used any particular software for security purposes, as it will alert terror groups. However, taking note of the seriousness of the allegations, the Centre has agreed to constitute a technical committee to examine the issue, and the said committee will submit a report to the Court, the SG added.
The petitioners - represented by Senior Advocates Kapil Sibal, Shyam Divan, Meenaskhi Arora, Rakesh Dwivedi, Dinesh Dwivedi, CU Singh - submitted that a committee constituted by the Centre cannot be expected to function in a fair and unbiased manner. According to the petitioners, NSO, the Israeli firm which developed Pegasus, sells its services only to governments, and when the Government of India was under a cloud of suspicion, it cannot be expected to conduct a fair probe.
The Supreme Court had on 17th August issued notice before admission to the Central Government in the batch of petitions. The Central Government had told the Supreme Court that it does not want to file any additional affidavit in the Pegasus issue, as national security aspects are involved. The Centre had added that it is willing to place the details before the expert committee proposed to be constituted by it to examine the issues.
The Pegasus controversy erupted on July 18 after The Wire and several other international publications published reports about the mobile numbers which were potential targets of the spyware service given by NSO company to various governments, including India. 40 Indian journalists, political leaders like Rahul Gandhi, election strategist Prashant Kishore, former ECI member Ashok Lavassa, etc are reported to be on the list of targets, as per The Wire.
Several petitions were thereafter filed before the Top Court seeking an independent probe into the matter, notice whereupon is yet to be issued. However, the Top Court has expressed concern over the alleged incident, saying that no doubt, the allegations are serious, if the reports are true. "Truth has to come out, that's a different story. We don't know whose names are there", CJI NV Ramana said. The petitions have been filed by several people including Advocate ML Sharma, journalists N Ram and Sashi Kumar, CPI(M) Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas, five pegasus targets (Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, SNM Abdi, Prem Shankar Jha, Rupesh Kumar Singh and Ipsa Shataksi), social activist Jagdeep Chhokkar, Narendra Kumar Mishra and the Editors Guild of India.