TDP's Nara Lokesh refutes Mamata Banerjee's Pegasus allegation; 'Offered but didn't buy'

A day after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claimed that the previous Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party (TDP) had purchased the Pegasus spyware, TDP National General Secretary and son of the former Andhra Pradesh CM, Nara Lokesh rubbished the allegations. He, however, said that the company did propose an offer to the Government to buy the spyware. CM Mamata Banerjee had earlier informed the West Bengal (WB) assembly that the Bengal police was offered the spyware for Rs 25 crore.

TDP Government was offered the Pegasus Spyware

Nara Lokesh refuted CM Mamata Banerjee's allegations and said, "She was misinformed. We have never purchased any spyware. We never indulged in any illegal phone tapping." Lokesh, who was the then Minister of Information Technology in Naidu's Cabinet, asserted, "Yes, Pegasus offered to sell its spyware to the AP government as well but we rejected it." Lokesh further said, "If there had been any such thing, would the (current) Jagan regime have spared us? In the last three years, they have tried every trick to fix us in one thing or the other but failed because we did nothing wrong."

The TDP MLC reiterated the DGP office's clarification made on August 12, 2021, which stated that the Government never procured the Pegasus Software. This was in response to a Right To Information (RTI) request filed on July 25, 2021 sent by a person identified as Nagendra Prasad, a resident of Yemmiganur, Kurnool district. The Supreme Court is currently hearing a bunch of pleas on the allegation that the Pegasus Software would conduct surveillance of certain people. 

What is Pegasus?

• NSO Group, an Israeli company that specialises in what experts call cyberweapons has developed the software.
• It was believed that Pegasus was targeting iPhone users.
• Several days after its discovery, Apple released an updated version of iOS, which reportedly patched the security loophole that Pegasus used to hack phones. 
• A year later, security researchers found that Pegasus was equally capable of infecting Android phones.
• In 2019, Facebook filed a case against NSO Group for creating Pegasus. The security researchers at Facebook were chasing Pegasus across their systems, and they found that the software was used to infect several journalists and activists in India.
• This was also the time when WhatsApp told the affected Indian users about it through a message.

Image: PTI, Shutterstock