Anil Ambani, Alok Verma New In Pegasus List

Industrialist Anil Ambani, former CBI Director Alok Verma, and two other senior officers at the agency — former special director Rakesh Asthana and former additional director A K Sharma were potential targets of surveillance of the Pegasus spyware.

According to a report by The Wire who is one of 16 media organisations around the world who are partnering with the French nonprofit Forbidden Stories and human rights group Amnesty International in a global investigative project centred on a database of numbers that may have been targeted with the spyware.

The list of potential targets of the Pegasus spyware also includes numbers of Anil Ambani's employee Tony Jesudan, and the French company Dassault Aviation's India representative Venkata Rao Posina, The Wire said in their reports.

Members of former CBI Director Alok Verma's family too are on the list, it said.

The numbers of Ambani and his employee entered the list in 2018, when a legal challenge had been mounted in the Supreme Court about the Indian government's deal with Dassault to purchase the Rafale jets, said the report.

"…The number for Dassault Aviation's representative in India, Venkata Rao Posina, former Saab India head Inderjit Sial and Boeing India boss Pratyush Kumar all appear in the leaked database at different periods of time in 2018 and 2019…," The Wire stated.

"According to the report, along with Verma, the personal telephone numbers of his wife, daughter and son-in-law would eventually get placed on the list too, making it a total of 8 numbers from this one family.

Also Read: 'Pegasus' Spyware – Should We Be Worried About It?