Nitish Kumar favours inquiry into Pegasus snoopgate

Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday strongly favoured a thorough inquiry into Pegasus phone surveillance incident, saying disturbing anyone was not a good thing.

Mr Kumar, after "Janata ke Darbar mein Mukhya Mantri" programme organised at CM secretariat, told media persons here that in his opinion, there must be a thorough probe into Pegasus phone surveillance incident. After taking all aspects into consideration, the incident must be probed as it was not good to harass anyone by tapping his or her phone, he added.

Chief Minister said he had been saying since long that there could be misuse of technology for harassing anyone which should be discouraged. It was an issue of parliament and he would not like to make any comment in this connection, he remarked while responding to a query on demand being made by opposition for a probe into the incident by Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC).

Mr Kumar, responding to a query on deadlock in parliament over demand for a probe into Pegasus phone

surveillance issue, said that opposition should place facts and figures before the government on the issue. If government was not prepared for inquiry, saying no such incident had happened, the opposition should also come out with concrete facts, he noted while responding to a query.

As it is, phones of a large number of journalists, politicians including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, some union ministers, a Supreme Court judge and other important persons were tapped using Pegasus Spyware, a software manufactured by NSO, a company of Israel. Opposition had been raising the issue in parliament, demanding a thorough inquiry into the incident, since it came to light few days back. Phones were allegedly tapped from the year 2017 to 2019 before Lok Sabha elections. (UNI)