The Indian Congress claimed that the general secretary of their party, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has also fallen victim to the Israeli NSO owned spyware, Pegasus as she received a message from WhatsApp alerting her to the probable encroachment on her privacy about a month ago.
Randeep Surjewala who is the Indian congress’s communication in-charge said at the press conference that, ”When WhatsApp sent out messages to all hacked phones, one such message was sent to Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s mobile phone too. WhatsApp did not say that the phone was hacked in an illegal fashion by Pegasus software. Nature of the message is already in the public domain and she received the message.”
But when asked to share the details about this alleged hacking, he declined to comment and instead stated that the other Opposition party leaders were also put under surveillance through this spyware.
Moreover, it was reported that the politicians were not targeted in this Pegasus outbreak which took around the whole world in April and May. Mostly the right activists, journalists, and lawyers were affected and spied upon, totaling around 1,400 among which 212 were disclosed to be Indians. This revelation came after Facebook-owned WhatsApp filed a suit against NSO company.
Though, we cannot say that Priyanka Gandhi was not affected by Pegasus as it might not be through the same process as with the other cases where the targeted users were hacked by a spam call and then this spyware was installed inside the device. And with this, Indian politics again gets swarmed inside of the fire of political war.
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