ED officer, Kejriwal’s aide among potential targets of hacking

A JUNIOR OFFICIAL IN THE PMO, TWO ARMY COLONELS ALSO FIGURE IN THE DATABASE

NEW DELHI: Phone numbers belonging to former directorgeneral of Border Security Force (BSF) KK Sharma, senior Enforcement Directorate (ED) officer Rajeshwar Singh and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s former aide VK Jain, among others, were potentially targeted for surveillance through Israeli firm NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, a report said on Monday.

According to The Wire, phone numbers used by a junior official in the Prime Minister’s Office, a retired officer of India’s external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and two army colonels also figure in the database of 50,000 numbers possibly selected for surveillance by agencies that were also clients of the NSO Group.

The Wire said KK Sharma’s number was placed on the list of probable targets for surveillance in 2018, barely a month after the 1982-batch IPS officer attended a conference by an affiliate of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) in Kolkata in February.

Sharma, who retired in September, was appointed by the Election Commission as a special observer for the Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal and Jharkhand the following year but was quickly dropped after the Trinamool Congress cited his participation in the RSS event.

The numbers of ED’S joint director Rajeshwar Singh, currently posted in Lucknow, and his family members, were also selected for the possible surveillance between 2017 and 2019, The Wire reported.

Singh, who has investigated some high-profile cases including the 2G spectrum allocation scam and the Aircel-maxis case against former finance minister P Chidambaram, was in the news in 2018 when the Centre removed the then Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director Alok Kumar Verma and then special director Rakesh Asthana from the agency following their public spat. There have been reports that Rajeshwar Singh played a key role in the Verma-asthana face-off. Kejriwal’s ex-adviser VK Jain’s name was added to the list in 2018 after he was questioned by the Delhi Police in connection with the alleged assault on the then Delhi chief secretary Anshu Prakash in February 2018. While Sharma and Jain were not available, Singh refused to comment on the matter.

The number of a former colonel Mukul Dev, who has been at loggerheads with the Centre on multiple issues including scrapping free rations for officers deployed in peace areas, was also placed as a possible target in 2019. Dev told HT: “I knew back in 2018 that I am under surveillance when I filed a complaint with Punjab Police following a direct threat to me.”