Government silent, Minister Gen V K Singh says NYT ‘supari media’

However, Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways and Civil Aviation and former Chief of Army Staff General Vijay Kumar Singh, while responding to a tweet on the issue Saturday, tweeted: “Can you trust NYT? They are known ‘Supari [hired for a hit job] Media’.

Earlier last year in July, the newly appointed IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had responded to the by calling the news reports “sensational”, and seeming to be an attempt “to malign Indian democracy and its well established institutions”.

Can you trust NYT?? They are known ” Supari Media “. https://t.co/l7iOn3QY6q

— General Vijay Kumar Singh (@Gen_VKSingh) January 29, 2022

When contacted Saturday, a senior official declined to comment on the NYT report saying that the Supreme Court was already “seized of the matter” and the Government had made a statement in Parliament.

Late last year, the Supreme Court had, while deciding on a plea moved by some of the persons who were targeted, formed a three-member committee to look into the allegations.

Its three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice NV Ramana, had also said that the state cannot get “a free pass every time the spectre of ‘national security’ is raised”, as it ordered a “thorough inquiry” into allegations of unauthorised surveillance using Pegasus.

The members of the panel are Dr Naveen Kumar Chaudhary, Dean of National Forensic Sciences University in Gandhinagar; Dr Prabaharan P, Professor at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham in Kerala; and Dr Ashwin Anil Gumaste, Institute Chair Associate Professor at IIT, Bombay. It is supervised by retired Supreme Court judge, Justice R V Raveendran.

The Indian Express had on November 30, 2021 reported that the committee had sent mails to the petitioners to submit their device for “technical evaluation”. On January 2 this year, the three-member panel issued an advertisement asking people who suspected their devices to be infected by the spyware to contact the committee before 12 pm on January 7.