SC lists bouquet of petitions on Pegasus on Feb. 23

12 cases, including one by senior journalist N. Ram and Sashi Kumar, are listed before three-judge Bench led by CJI

The Supreme Court has listed for hearing on Wednesday a clutch of petitions based on which it set up a technical committee monitored by former apex court judge R.V. Raveendran in October last to examine allegations of the government using the Israeli military grade software to spy on citizens.

The 12 cases, including one by senior journalist N. Ram and Sashi Kumar, are listed before a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) N.V. Ramana.

The lead case, filed by advocate Manohar Lal Sharma, shows it would be taken up "along with the interim report submitted by the technical committee".

Mr. Sharma's recent application for investigation into an allegation in a The New York Times report that India bought the Pegasus spyware from Israel may come up before the Bench, also comprising Justices A.S. Bopanna and Hima Kohli.

A Bench led by the CJI, in a 46-page order on October 27, constituted the technical committee when the government did not file a "detailed affidavit" in court in response to the petitions, citing national security reasons among others. The court, in October, asked the committee to give a report expeditiously and listed the case in eight weeks.

However, in early January, the committee issued a public notice inviting citizens who believe they were victims of Pegasus snooping to give detailed reasons to substantiate their suspicions. News reports had said a cross-section of people, from journalists, activists, parliamentarians, government officials, lawyers and even court staffers, were targetted using Pegasus. In case the suspicions ring true and deserve further examination, the committee had said, mobile phones and instruments would be collected by the committee in Delhi and digital phone images of the records collected would be provided to their owners.

The job cut out for the committee was to “enquire, investigate and determine” whether the “Pegasus suite of spyware was used on phones or other devices of the citizens of India to access stored data, eavesdrop on conversations, intercept information and/or for any other purposes”. The other questions of the committee included whether Pegasus was used by the Centre or State or any of their agencies against their own citizens, and if used, was it authorised and under what law or procedure.