Bhupesh Baghel forms panel to investigate WhatsApp privacy breach

Bhupesh Baghel, Chhattisgarh’s Chief Minister has formed a probe panel to investigate the phone hacking complaints of Chhattisgarh-based right activists and also to look into a presentation of Israeli cyber intelligence company NSO Group, which has been blamed for snooping. 

Chhattisgarh’s principal secretary (home) Subrat Sahu would head the panel, which was formed on Saturday. The panel will also include Raipur’s inspector general Anand Chhabra and state public relations department director, Taran Prakash Sinha. The panel has been asked to submit its report in one month.

On October 1 several rights activists, lawyers, and journalists said that they had been identified as targets of phone hack aimed at snooping on them. It came a day after WhatsApp went public with allegations against the NSO Group, which is known mostly as Pegasus, for having misused its platform to aid spying on around 1,400 people globally.

It has been reported that the people targeted in India included former Union minister Praful Patel and ex-Lok Sabha member Santosh Bhartiya. It later emerged that at least 121 Indians were targeted. It was unclear how many of these snooping attempts were successful.

Four Chhattisgarh-based rights activists, Alok Shukla, Shalini Gera, Bela Bhatia, and Degree Prasad Chauhan, have alleged that their mobile phones were also targeted. The Congress on October 3 said that WhatsApp also informed the party’s general secretary, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, that her phone data was suspected to have been breached.

The order said that the probe panel has been formed on the basis of media reports and complaints of the rights activists.