The Supreme Court delivered its judgement on Wednesday on a batch of pleas seeking independent probe into the Pegasus snooping matter.
A bench comprising Chief Justice NV Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli had reserved order on September 13, saying it only wanted to know whether or not the Centre used the Pegasus spyware through illegal methods to allegedly snoop on citizens.
The court will finally take a call regarding whether there is a requirement of an independent probe in the matter or not.
The top court had said it would pronounce the order in a few days and asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, to mention the case if the government had a re-think about filing a detailed affidavit.
A group of petitioners, which included former Union minister Yashwant Sinha, CPM MP John Brittas, Supreme Court advocate ML Sharma, the Editors’ Guild of India, and several individual journalists, had asked the top court to order a probe to determine the details of the alleged unauthorized surveillance of various notable people done through the Pegasus software.
The apex court had observed orally that it would set up a technical expert committee to inquire into the matter and pass an interim order on the pleas seeking an independent probe into the grievances of the alleged surveillance of certain eminent Indians by hacking their phones using Israeli firm NSO’s spyware, Pegasus.
What is the government’s stand on Pegasus?
The law officer had contended that the disclosure of whether the country was using a particular software or not may cause harm and alert all potential targets, including terror groups. ”We had to have your affidavit to understand your stand. We do not want to say anything further, the court had told Mehta, adding that if spyware is used by the government then it has to be as per the procedure established by the law.
The law officer had said the government has nothing to hide and that is why the Centre has on its own said it will constitute a committee of domain experts who will look into the allegations and report to the court. I am not averse to certain individuals claiming invasion of privacy.
This is serious and must be gotten into. The question is whether it is Pegasus or something. Our stand is putting this into an affidavit will not serve national interest… Hence allow us to form a committee of domain experts without the government members, Mehta had added.