Numbers of Rahul, PK, 2 Union Mins Pegasus targets: Report

New Delhi: Mobile phones in use by Rahul Gandhi, the erstwhile president of the Indian National Congress and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's primary rival in the 2019 general elections were targetted for a potential hack through Pegasus — an Israeli software manufactured by the NSO Group and sold exclusively to governments and government agencies, a slew of international newspapers reported on Monday.

The revelations came as The Guardian, The Washington Post, and news website The Wire here reported as part of The Pegasus Project that the Indian government had allegedly targetted the phone numbers of not just Gandhi but that of the then Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa, ace political strategist Prashant Kishor, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew and TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee among a slew of others.

The reports said two of Gandhi's phone numbers had been selected as a target for a potential spyware attack in the run-up to the 2019 elections. In addition to this, the phone numbers of five of his social friends, who have nothing to do with politics or public life, were also on the list, The Wire reported.

Gandhi has said the two numbers that featured on the list, had not been in use by him for a while now, adding that he kept changing devices and numbers to "make it harder" to hack after he had received suspicious WhatsApp messages — the first step to a Pegasus attack. Since he does not have access to the devices, it will not be possible to confirm whether it was under a Pegasus attack, but the numbers' mention on the list indicates that they were selected for potential surveillance from mid-2018 to mid-2019.

Phone numbers belonging to Lavasa appeared on this list soon after his dissent in ECI deliberations over Prime Minister Modi's violation of the MCC became public.

The phone number that Lavasa had been using in 2019, was identified in the list of targets, The Wire reported, adding that he refused to participate in the project to analyse whether his device had been under attack.

His number was added to the list of weeks after he had, on five occasions, suggested that Modi be penalised for violating the MCC, in force for GE 2019 at the time, the reports added.

Significantly, the phone numbers of a journalist who had extensively reported on Lavasa's dissent and the co-founder of the Association for Democratic Reforms were also added to the list around the same time.

Moreover, The Wire has now also reported that Prashant Kishor's phone numbers, one number of his aide and that of Abhishek Banerjee's had come under a Pegasus attack even as the most recent state elections were underway.

Kishor was at the time, working for the TMC, the BJP's only rival in the most recent polls in the state. Banerjee, a top party official, was at the time closely involved in designing the party's election campaign. Kishor's phone was also under a potential Pegasus attack in 2018 just before GE 2019.

Significantly, as the Union government on Monday tried to deflect global media attention from the snooping allegations against it, through newly-minted MeITY minister Ashwini Vaishnaw's response in Parliament, where, interestingly, the government shied away from categorically denying the allegations,

The Wire reported that Vaishnaw himself had featured on the list of potential targets along with another Union minister Prahlad Singh Patel.

Importantly, The Pegasus Project is coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a French investigative reporting collective, in collaboration with Amnesty International, working with journalists across scores of countries.

While the NSO Group has acknowledged that the list was that of phone numbers identified by its clients, it has said it was not for the purpose for which the software has been made and exported.

While a phone number's mention on the list does not confirm a Pegasus attack on it, it confirms that the phone number was identified as a potential target by NSO Group's clients. The only way a Pegasus attack can be confirmed is through a physical forensic examination of the device.

Of the over 50,000 phone numbers in the list, 67 were forensically examined, of which 37 worldwide confirmed a Pegasus attack. Of these 37 phone numbers, 10 are from India.

The revelations on Monday evening also showed that the woman, who had accused erstwhile Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment, had also been selected for a potential Pegasus attack, hours before she was set to appear in front of her alleged abuser in her alleged abuser's own courtroom.

A more alarming revelation was that in addition to the phone number of the alleged victim, the phone numbers of 11 people associated with her and her family members were also added to the list for a potential Pegasus attack.

After an already disruptive at the Monsoon Session of Parliament owing to Sunday's reports on the Pegasus leaks, both the BJP and the Congress launched into a fresh war of words based on Monday's reports — expected to spill over in Parliament today (Tuesday).

In addition to these names, The Guardian reported that at least two employees of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in India, including a US citizen, and top Indian virologist Gagandeep Kang, the first woman to be accepted into the UK's Royal Society were also targetted for a potential spyware attack. The UK newspaper added that the director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's India operations was also selected as a target along with multiple researchers working with anti-tobacco NGOs.