More facts andinformation are getting disclosed related to project Pegasus. The formerstaffer of the Supreme Court, who accused former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment, was also a target in the phone hacking case.
The Wire confirm thatthree phone numbers belonging to the Supreme Court staffer who accusedformer Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment in April2019 were selected as potential targets for surveillance by an unidentifiedIndian agency that is a customer of the Israel-based-NSO Group.
The report alsostated that the phones of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and election strategistPrashant Kishor were also hacked through Israeli spyware. This has beenrevealed in the next part of the report released by The Wire on Sundaynight. After this report came to the fore, Congress demanded anindependent inquiry into the entire matter in Parliament. The party hasalso demanded the resignation of Home Minister Amit Shah.
The staffer, whosename we are withholding, was dismissed from service in December 2018, weeksafter she says she rebuffed the judge’s advances. She recorded her allegationsin a sworn affidavit on April 20, 2019 and was marked as a person of interestjust days after this, an analysis of a leaked list of phone numbers accessed byFrench media non-profit Forbidden Stories reveals.
The leaked recordsshow that eight other phone numbers belonging to her husband and two of hisbrothers were also marked as possible candidates for surveillance in the sameweek, when her allegations against the CJI were first reported.
In total, about11 numbers associated with the complainant and her family were selected.This makes them the largest cluster of associated phone numbers in India.
Her presence in thelist, and the timing of her selection, suggest that the reason she and herfamily became persons of interest is because she went public with seriousallegations against the sitting chief justice of India.
Her selection alsounderlines the point privacy advocates have been making for some time: that theuse of highly intrusive and illegal means of surveillance has become routine insituations for which there is not even a remote ‘public emergency’ or ‘nationalsecurity’ alibi.