Pegasus snooping row: Anil Ambani, CBI ex-director Alok Verma on list

Phones used by 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 using the Pegasus spyware, according to a report published by The Wire on Thursday.

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

Former CBI director Alok Verma’s phone number appeared on the list in October 2018, The Wire said, when the CBI was mired in an ugly turf war among officials, and Verma, the Director of the agency, had registered an FIR against his deputy Rakesh Asthana.

The Wire 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.