[Pegasus] 29 mobile devices being examined by expert committee; Supreme Court extends time for submission of report

The Supreme Court on Friday granted additional time to the 3-member expert committee to submit its final report with regard to the Pegasus surveillance scandal. .A bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana and Justice Hima Kohli noted that at least 29 mobile devices are being examined by the committee and it has sought additional time to complete the exercise. "29 mobile devices are being examined. They have invited objections and the mobile devices are still being examined. Technical committee has seized 29 devices and examined some. Once the technical committee submits a report to supervisory judge, the judge will also add his comments. So we deem it fit to extend the time. We direct technical committee to expedite examination of devices," the Court said in its order.Preferably the process by technical committee should be over in 4 weeks and supervisory judge should be informed, the Court added. The matter will be heard again in July. .The three-member expert committee was appointed by the Supreme Court in October last year to probe into the scandal. The committee is headed by former Supreme Court judge, Justice RV Raveendran and assisted by Alok Joshi (former IPS Officer) and Dr. Sundeep Oberoi, Chairman, Sub Committee in (International Organisation of Standardisation/International Electro-Technical Commission/Joint Technical Committee)..Israel-based spyware firm NSO is best known for its Pegasus spyware, which it claims is sold only to “vetted governments” and not to private entities, though the company does not reveal which governments it sells the controversial product to.An international consortium of news outlets, including the Indian news portal The Wire, had recently released a series of reports indicating that the said the software may have been used to infect the mobile devices of several persons including Indian journalists, activists, lawyers, officials, a former Supreme Court judge and others.The reports had referred to a list of phone numbers that were selected as potential targets. Upon analysis by a team from Amnesty International, some of these numbers were found to have traces of a successful Pegasus infection, while some showed attempted infection, the reports had said.A slew of petitions then came to be filed before the top court seeking probe into the allegations.The petitioners included Advocate ML Sharma, Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas, Director of Hindu Group of publications N Ram and founder of Asianet Sashi Kumar, Editors Guild of India, journalists Rupesh Kumar Singh, Ipsa Shatakshi, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, SNM Abidi and Prem Shankar Jha.Pursuant to that, the Supreme Court had constituted the expert committee.