Puducherry, July 21(BPNS)
The Puducherry Pradesh Congress Committee President, A.V. Subramanian has said that the BJP government at the centre had spied on the mobile phones of ministers, judicial officers, journalists, senior leaders of opposition parties, lawyers, activists, and former heads of Indian security forces through Israeli surveillance software Pegasus.
In a statement on Wednesday, the senior Congress leader said that the BJP government has murdered the rule of law and has compromised on national security. He said that the fundamental rights to privacy and constitutional duties were also not at all taken care of by the central government.
He said that the spyware Pegasus turns on the camera of the phone as well as the microphone to capture all activities near the phone besides hacking all the security features of the phone.
The senior leader said ,” This is treason and total abdication of national security by the government, more so when the foreign company could possibly have access to the data”.
He said that the telephone of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and his office staff were also hacked and attacked the Union IT minister for misleading the parliament. He said that the former IT minister had admitted in the parliament that 121 people from India were on the Pegasus infected list and that the Union government had issued a notice to NSO. This was on November 28, 2019.
He asked whether Prime Minister Modi had directly authorized the purchase and use of the illegal spyware or whether the Union Home minister did that.
