"New York Times Erred Egregiously": Ex Envoy To NDTV On Fresh Pegasus Row

Syed Akbaruddin said that even after that 2019 vote mentioned in the New York Times report, India continued to handle Israel-Palestine issues as it has always done, going back as far as 1970.

There was no link between the $2 billion India-Israel deal that purportedly involved the Pegasus spyware and an Indian vote in the United Nations as suggested by The New York Times, the former Indian envoy to the United Nations Syed Akbaruddin told NDTV on Saturday.

Calling the vote a "low-level issue", Mr Akbaruddin said no one from New Delhi, Israel or Palestine contacted the Indian mission in New York at the time in 2019 and to hint that it was quid-pro-quo for the snooping tool was an "egregious" error.

"Our (India and Israel) ties had improved. There is no doubt about that. It was visible to everybody at the UN. I have written in my book that Israel endorsed an Indian judge to the ICJ (International Court of Justice). This was in 2017. This was open knowledge that our ties were warming up. Where interests coincide, certainly states will work together. I don't think there is anything to hide about it... I don't think that's a linkage. I must say The New York Times on this thing erred and erred egregiously," he said.

"It was a rather mundane case of a Palestinian NGO... and initially everybody didn't have a problem with it. At that time, several countries came out and said they had found some linkages which were not highlighted by the NGO during the initial submission," Mr Akbaruddin said.