Supreme Court To Pronounce Judgment In Pegasus Spyware Case On Wednesday

Chief Justice of India (CJI) NV Ramana, on September 23, had said in open court that the Supreme Court was mooting the constitution of an expert committee to probe the scandal.

However, some of the experts who were contacted had expressed their inability to become part of the committee due to personal reasons leading to the delay by the top court in passing an order in this regard.

What is Pegasus?

Pegasus spyware is owned by Israel based spyware firm NSO. It is sold only to “vetted governments” and not to private entities. The list of these governments is secret.

What is the Pegasus scandal?

An international consortium, including the Indian news portal The Wire, had recently released a series of reports indicating that the said the software may have been used to infect the mobile devices of several persons including Indian journalists, activists, lawyers, officials, a former Supreme Court judge and others.

The reports had referred to a list of phone numbers that were selected as potential targets. Upon analysis by a team from Amnesty International, some of these numbers were found to have traces of a successful Pegasus infection, while some showed attempted infection, the reports had said.

A slew of petitions was then filed before the top court seeking a probe into the allegations.