The alleged victims of the Pegasus ‘snoop gate’ conspiracy, who had earlier claimed to have submitted their devices to self-proclaimed cyber security experts for forensic analysis, have failed to submit their devices before the Supreme Court-appointed panel that is probing the Pegasus ‘snoop gate’ case.
On January 2, 2022, the technical committee appointed by the Supreme Court had issued a public notice asking citizens and alleged victims of the Pegasus snoop gate to come forward and contact the panel if they suspected that their mobile devices were infected by Pegasus malware.
The public notice had also asked such citizens also to specify the reasons as to why they thought that their device may have been infected with Pegasus malware and whether they would be in a position to allow the technical committee to examine the said device.
The public notice issued in leading dailies read, “such person who suspects her/his device is infected” should send an email to the technical committee “before noon of January 7, 2022”.
However, according to the latest notice issued by the Supreme Court-appointed technical committee, only two people out of several self-proclaimed victims of ‘snooping’ have handed over their mobile phones to the Pegasus panel appointed by the Supreme Court.
The technical committee has released a notice urging them again to come forward and contact the panel if they suspected that their mobile devices were infected by Pegasus malware. The panel has now given time till February 8 for the other alleged victims to contact the panel and submit their devices that may have been infected by Pegasus.
One of the two persons is senior journalist J Gopikrishnan.
Journalists, political figures, left-liberals, lawyers fails to submit their devices before SC-appointed panel:
According to the latest notice issued by the Supreme Court-appointed panel, most of the self-proclaimed victims, comprising self-proclaimed journalists, political leaders, alleged activists, lawyers, etc., have not even submitted their devices to the technical panel probing the issue. The left-wing media outlets who have been aggressively putting out Pegasus ‘snoop gate’ conspiracy theories, had listed the names of 174 ‘victims’, who have been allegedly targetted by the Modi government by using Israeli spyware.
However, only two of the 174 ‘victims’ have come forward to submit their devices. The other ‘victims’ are yet to appear before the panel or present their devices before the technical panel appointed by the Supreme Court.
Interestingly, some of these alleged victims had voluntarily produced their devices to self-proclaimed cyber security ‘experts’ for “forensic” analysis. A few weeks after France-based media non-profit organisation Forbidden Stories had accessed a leaked database of 50,000 numbers whose names ‘may’ have been in the list of ‘potential targets’ for the prospective clients of NSO Group, the Amnesty International, in collaboration with far-left propaganda website – The Wire, had claimed to have carried out a forensic examination of the phones of 10 Indians, all of which, according to them, showed signs of either an attempted hack or a successful compromise.
Similarly, some of the petitioners have appointed their own “cyber experts”, who have now deposed before the Supreme Court-appointed committee that is probing the use of Pegasus ‘snoop gate’. These experts have told the panel that they found evidence of the presence of malware on the devices of their clients.
These “cyber-security researchers” had analysed the devices submitted to them by some alleged victims for forensic analysis.
Intriguingly, the same people who have submitted their devices to the cyber experts to publish investigative reports and to researchers who appeared before the panel are highly reluctant to do the same before the Supreme Court-appointed panel, raising suspicion over their conduct. Instead, they have sent “cyber experts” to appear before the panel to claim that their devices were affected by the Pegasus spyware.
With five days remaining for the latest deadline to end, one has to see whether the alleged victims would voluntarily submit their devices before the SC-appointed panel.
