Indian government spying on PM Khan through his phone: Report

The Indian government targeted Prime Minister Imran Khan’s phone for surveillance, reports The Guardian. Analysis of the more than 1,000 mostly Indian phone numbers selected for potential targeting by using Pegasus spyware strongly indicates intelligence agencies within the Indian government were behind the selection.

Among other numbers identified by the Pegasus Project, the client identified two numbers registered to or once known to have been used by PM Imran Khan. The records also included numbers of known priorities of India’s security agencies, including Kashmiri separatist leaders, Pakistani diplomats, Chinese journalists, Sikh activists, and business people who have known to be the subject of police investigations.

Narendra Modi’s political rival and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was twice selected as a potential surveillance target in the leaked phone number data, making him one of the dozens of Indian politicians, journalists, activists, and government critics whose numbers were identified as possible targets for the Israeli company’s government clients.

The phone numbers of over 40 Indian journalists appeared on a leaked list of potential targets for surveillance, and forensic tests have confirmed that some of them were successfully snooped upon by an unidentified agency using Israel’s Pegasus spyware, reported The Wire.

Forensic tests conducted as part of this project on a small cross-section of phones associated with these numbers revealed clear signs of targeting by Pegasus spyware in 37 phones, of which 10 are Indian.

Indian ministers, government officials, and Opposition leaders also figure in the list of people whose phones may have been compromised by the spyware, claimed The Wire.