Controversial leader and Samajwadi Party (SP) MP from Muradabad, ST Hasan has accused the government of spying on opposition leaders after an ‘objectionable film’ started playing on a CCTV monitor installed at his residence. The incident took place at his house in Moradabad, as alleged by the SP leader.
As per an ABP News report, Hasan claimed that on Saturday, “Suddenly an ‘objectionable film’ which cannot be watched with the family started playing on the CCTV monitor here, I tried to stop it, don’t know where the technology is heading. This TV you are seeing is also being monitored from somewhere else.”
ST Hasan alleged that the government is conducting espionage on opposition leaders using Pegasus. He also alleged that the government did not cooperate in the judicial inquiry into the Pegasus issue.
According to the SP MP, it has also come out that Pegasus is such a technology that “even smart TVs can spy on you, and that you should sleep with the internet turned off or else your room will be filmed.” He voiced doubt that opposition leaders are being spied on and that an investigation should be conducted.
The Samajwadi Party MP further alleged that the government is tapping phone calls of opposition leaders and spying through Pegasus spying software in the name of nationalism. He added that Judicial Committee in its report stated that the government did not cooperate in the investigation. It is pertinent to recall here that in August last year, the Supreme Court had said that there was no conclusive evidence to back the claim that the Indian government was using the Pegasus spyware to snoop on people.
It is pertinent to note that ST Hasan has often been in controversies over outrageous remarks. In the year 2021, Hasan alleged that deaths due to the coronavirus outbreak are happening because the BJP government at the centre has been messing with the Islamic Sharia law during the 7 years of its rule. He claimed that two cyclones and covid deaths are the signs of the injustices committed by the BJP government against Muslims.
Moreover, he had earlier compared actresses to prostitutes while defending actor Zaira Wasim’s decision to quit the film industry because it ‘interfered with her faith’.
In October 2019, Samajwadi Party (SP) MP ST Hasan compared the Indian parliament to a religious congregation as he said that the environment inside the Parliament is such that he felt parliament was a religious group rather than a governing body.