Opposition parties and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who was reported to be one of the victims of the Pegasus spyware attack, on Wednesday welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to appoint an expert panel to probe the surveillance scandal.

At a press conference here, Gandhi said the Apex court-appointed panel would hopefully unearth the answers to questions that the ruling BJP has refused to answer. “We were asking three basic questions —who authorised the Pegasus use, which agency, which person authorised Pegasus as we all know Pegasus cannot be bought by a private individual, it has to be bought by a government. The second question was who was it used against. Finally, did any other country have access to information of our people,” the former Congress chief said.

‘A scathing indictment’

During the last Parliament session, the Opposition had jointly taken up the issue and had stalled proceedings demanding a probe. CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said the Supreme Court decision amounted to a “scathing indictment” of the government. “The obduracy of the Government to answer if it had used Pegasus confirms its complicity. Committee must invite individuals and even foreign experts to testify. It must expeditiously complete the inquiry,” said Yechury.

Also read: Pegasus snoopgate: SC appoints expert committee to probe allegations

Rahul Gandhi said it is “a big step that the Supreme Court has said that they are going to look into this matter. I am confident that we will get the truth out of this”.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday appointed a three-member panel of cyber experts to probe the alleged use of Israeli spyware Pegasus for surveillance of certain people in India, saying every citizen needs protection against privacy violation and mere invocation of “national security by State” does not render the court a “mute spectator”.

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