{"id":15659,"date":"2021-07-19T17:55:53","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T12:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/34.22.110.190\/english\/?p=15659"},"modified":"2021-07-19T17:55:53","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T12:25:53","slug":"rahul-gandhi-prashant-kishor-ashwini-vaishnaw-ashok-lavasa-other-pegasus-targets-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/rahul-gandhi-prashant-kishor-ashwini-vaishnaw-ashok-lavasa-other-pegasus-targets-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Rahul Gandhi, Prashant Kishor, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Ashok Lavasa other Pegasus targets: report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, poll strategist Prashant Kishor and new IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw are some of the names revealed as potential targets of Israeli spyware \u201cPegasus\u201d in a report by <a href=\"https:\/\/thewire.in\/government\/rahul-gandhi-pegasus-spyware-target-2019-polls\" data-schema-attribute=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><em>The Wire<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Wire<\/em> has said that at least two mobile phone accounts used by Rahul Gandhi were among 300 verified Indian numbers listed as potential targets by an official Indian client of the Israeli surveillance technology vendor, NSO Group. Rahul Gandhi\u2019s numbers, no longer used by him, were apparently selected for targeting from mid-2018 to mid-2019, when the Lok Sabha elections were held.<\/p>\n<p>According to the report: \u201cGandhi\u2019s numbers, which he has since given up, are part of\u00a0a\u00a0large\u00a0database of leaked numbers\u00a0believed to be drawn up by NSO Group clients and\u00a0accessed by the French media nonprofit Forbidden Stories and shared with 16 news organisations, including\u00a0<em>The Wire, The Guardian, Washington Post, Le Monde<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Haaretz<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rahul Gandhi has told <em>The Wire<\/em> that he \u201chad received suspicious WhatsApp messages in the past \u2013 one of the known vectors for a spyware hack \u2013 and frequently changed\u00a0numbers and instruments\u00a0so as to\u00a0make it \u2018a little harder for them\u2019 to target him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The targets also include two Union Ministers, Prahlad Patel and Ashwini Vaishnaw, <a href=\"https:\/\/thewire.in\/government\/pegasus-project-rahul-gandhi-prashant-kishor-ashok-lavasa-ashwini-vaishnaw-prahlad-patel\" data-schema-attribute=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>according to <em>The Wire<\/em>. <\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Vaishnaw was recently made the country\u2019s IT minister in the Narendra Modi cabinet, and was apparently targeted for possible surveillance in 2017, and at that time he was neither a minister nor an MP. Vaishnaw said in the Parliament earlier today that there is \u201cno substance\u201d in the allegations.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Wire<\/em> has reported that among those targeted are poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who has been recently working with Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee. Ashok Lavasa, a former Election Commissioner, who had recorded a dissenting opinion on the poll body\u2019s ruling on complaints against PM Modi and Amit Shah during the 2019 national election campaign, was also reported to be a target.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, poll strategist Prashant Kishor and new IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw are some of the names revealed as potential&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1236,"featured_media":2551,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_seo_keywords":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[135,57,47,115,35,56,583,46],"class_list":["post-15659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nation","tag-abhishek-banerjee","tag-bjp","tag-congress","tag-lok-sabha-2019","tag-prashant-kishor","tag-rahul-gandhi","tag-top-story","tag-trinamool-congress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1236"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}