[Bhima Koregaon] NIA moves Special Court for permission to hand over seized phones of 7 accused to Pegasus Committee

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Saturday moved an application before the Special NIA Court seeking to submit seized mobile phones of seven accused from the Bhima Koregaon case of 2018 to the Supreme Court appointed technical committee probing the Pegasus spyware scandal.

The application by NIA came after the seven accused in the case wrote to the committee stating that they have reasons to believe their phones were hacked and compromised by the spyware.

The seven accused are Rona Wilson, Vernon Gonsalves, P. Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Anand Teltumbde, Hany Babu and Shoma Sen.

They had stated in their communication to the NIA that a total of 26 devices (collectively amongst 7 people) were in the custody of NIA, which is why they were not in a position to make the submission themselves.

Their devices had been seized by the Pune city police and NIA at the time of their arrest.

Subsequently, the technical committee wrote to the NIA in January 2022, seeking the devices in order to makes copies of the same and thereafter inspect them.

The NIA moved the present application pursuant to that.

Special Judge DE Kothalikar directed the agency to serve a copy of the application on the accused or their advocates and sought their responses by today.

Last year on October 27, the Supreme Court had ordered a probe into the Pegasus surveillance scandal by an independent three-member expert and technical committees.

While passing probe orders, the three-judge Bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli had berated the Central government for raising the argument of national security to defend its case stating that it cannot be an omnibus argument to gain a free pass every time the Court exercises judicial review.

The technical committee had then issued a public notice seeking details from citizens who have a reasonable cause to suspect that their devices were compromised by the Pegasus spyware.

It urged citizens to contact it with reasons as to why they believe their devices may have been infected by the Pegasus malware, and whether they would be in a position to allow the committee to examine their device.

[“source=barandbench”]