Supreme Court to hear batch of Pleas on Pegasus Spying Allegations on February 23

Munmun Kaur

Published On: February 22, 2022 at 16:27 IST

The Supreme Court is all set to hear on February 23, a batch of Petitions on the Pegasus spyware issue after it was last heard on October 27, 2021.

Last year, the Supreme Court ordered the setting up of a three-member panel of cyber experts to probe the allegations that the Israeli spyware was used for surveillance of certain people in India.

As many as 12 PILs have been listed for hearing on February 23, which includes the ones filed by the Editors Guild of India and veteran journalists N Ram and Sashi Kumarand.

A Bench of Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli is likely to peruse and analyze the report which was to be filed by the Supreme Court-appointed panel.

The three-member panel consists of Naveen Kumar Chaudhary, Prabaharan P, and Ashwin Anil Gumaste. The three experts on cyber security, digital forensics, networks, and hardware, were asked to enquire, investigate and determine whether Pegasus spyware was used for snooping on citizens.

Their probe will be monitored by the former Supreme Court Judge Justice Raveendran, who is assisted by former IPS officer Alok Joshi and Sundeep Oberoi, Chairman of Sub Committee in International Organisation of Standardisation/ International Electro-Technical Commission/Joint Technical Committee in monitoring the inquiry of the technical panel. As per the reports, an interim report was submitted in the Apex Court by the panel.

As per the reports, the probe panel was facing some difficulties as very few people were willing to come forward to depose before it or submit their devices for technical scrutiny.

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