Slamming the NDA government over the snooping allegations, Former Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Friday claimed that the Israeli envoy’s statement on the Pegasus spyware made it clear that “the buyer was Government of India [GoI]”.
“After the Supreme Court’s wise and bold order in the Pegasus controversy, the first skeleton has tumbled out. Yesterday, Israel’s Ambassador publicly stated that Pegasus spyware was sold only to government. So, in India’s case, the buyer was certainly the Government of India,” he tweeted.
“Will the Minister for Telecommunications admit that the buyer of Pegasus was the government of India? If he remains silent, the blot on his report card will remain,” he added.
Israeli Ambassador Naor Gilon said on Thursday that his country did not allow companies such as the NSO to sell their products to non-governmental actors.
“... Every export of NSO or such companies needs an export licence of the Israeli government. We grant this export licence only for exporting to governments. This is the only main requirement...Under the requirements, they cannot sell it to non-governmental actors. What's happening here in India is an internal thing for India and I would rather not go into your internal matters,” he stated.
The Supreme Court set up To probe further into the alleged use of Pegasus spyware for targeted surveillance in India. The Supreme Court has set up a three-member independent expert panel on Wednesday.
