Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi during his lecture on Thursday at the prestigious University of Cambridge mentioned the Pegasus row that created a political stir in India a couple of months ago.
"Large number of poltical leaders have Pegasus on their phone. I myself had Pegasus on my phone. I have been called by intelligence officers who say please be careful of what you say on the phone as we are recording the stuff," he said.
So there is a constant pressure that we feel, he claimed.
"Cases are registered against Opposition. I have got a number of criminal cases registered against me for the things which shouldn't be under criminal cases," he added.
As Opposition, it is very difficult to communicate with people when you have this type of an assault on media and on the democratic architecture, Gandhi asserted.
SC on Pegasus spyware row
The Supreme Court in August 2022 said the technical panel appointed by it to probe the unauthorised use of Pegasus found some malware in five mobile phones out of the 29 examined but it could not be concluded that it was due to the Israeli spyware. After perusing the report submitted by former apex court Justice R V Raveendran, Chief Justice N V Ramana also noted that the Central government did not cooperate with the Pegasus probe.
The top court had ordered a probe into the allegations of the use of Israeli spyware by government agencies for targeted surveillance of politicians, journalists and activists and appointed technical and supervisory committees to look into the Pegasus row after an international media consortium last year reported that over 300 verified Indian mobile phone numbers were on the list of potential targets.
Rahul Gandhi at Cambridge Judge Business School
Rahul Gandhi, who is a Visiting Fellow of the Cambridge Judge Business School (Cambridge JBS), delivered the lecture to students at the university on the subject of ‘Learning to Listen in the 21st Century’ on Tuesday evening.
Cambridge JBS said its MBA programme is for globally minded, successful individuals who want to understand the complexities of business and society and expressed gratitude to Gandhi for sharing his “experience and insight on global economics and policymaking”.
Gandhi is on a week-long tour of the UK and is scheduled to hold some closed-door sessions on Big Data and Democracy and India-China relations at Cambridge University. Later in the week, he will interact with representatives of the Indian Overseas Congress (IOC) UK chapter and also address an "Indian Diaspora Conference" planned over the weekend in London.
(With PTI input)
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