NEW DELHI: “What is wrong in govt having spyware to track terrorists and enemies of the country?” Supreme Court on Tuesday put this question to petitioners clamouring for making public the court-appointed committee’s report on Pegasus spyware and alleging that it was used to “snoop on citizens”.
“The kind of situation we are facing now, wemust be very careful. We cannot compromise on security and safety of country,” a bench of justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh said in what appeared to be a reference to the Pahalgam atrocity.
Senior advocates Kapil Sibal, Shyam Divan and Dinesh Dwivedi flagged a US district court order to claim that WhatsApp had admitted about its system being hacked by Pegasus in India and other countries and repeatedly requested the bench to make public the Justice R V Raveendran committee report and seek Centre’s response on whether it had bought the military-grade Israeli spyware.
When the Pegasus controversy broke out in 2021, SC had set up a committee under Justice Raveendran to examine the allegation of use of the spyware to surveil on politicians, including a couple from the ruling party, journalists and others.
The committee, which was appointed on Oct 27, 2021, had informed the court that only a few people who had claimed that their phones were hacked using Pegasus had submitted their mobile phones for verification by the committee. It found no conclusive evidence of the misuse of Pegasus, though it found signs of suspected interception of conversations and messages in a few cases.
For petitioners, who included N Ram, John Brittas and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, the advocates said the Centre had not denied using the spyware.
Solicitor general Tushar Mehta, stuck to the Centre’s consistent stand and said, “Government of India does not answer questions concerning sovereignty and security of the country in motivated petitions.”
The bench said the US district court order was of little use as SC had passed a detailed judgment and a report had been submitted by the high-powered committee. “You tell us the name of the petitioner who suspects his phone was hacked. We will check in the report and then tell you whether the apprehension is true. But we cannot make the report public as we do not want it to be a document for discussion on the street,” it said.
When Divan said the spyware was used by the govt to “snoop on its citizens”, Mehta reiterated that sovereignty and security of the country could not be the subject of debate in the court and alleged that the petitioners were using the forum for some purpose other than the cause they had publicly espoused. “Terrorists and those who want to cause disturbance in the country cannot claim the right to privacy,” the SG said. The petitioners said the court could redact sensitive information from the report and then give it to them to understand the process of scientific examination and the findings.
