A bench led by Chief Justice of India NV Ramana said that it would in the meanwhile deliberate the next course of action: Whether to accept an offer by the government to have the issue probed by a team of neutral, technical experts or order a probe by a special investigation team as sought by the petitioners, who include veteran journalist N Ram, Prem Shankar Jha and Jagdeep Chokhar. They have rejected the Centre’s offer to have the issue probed by a government committee.
The Editors’ Guild, through senior advocate Kapil Sibal, argued that the government must make a categorical statement on whether Pegasus has been used in India or not as alleged in a section of a press. The government, they argued, has only stated that nothing was done beyond the statutory scheme. The government has said that interceptions if any were done as per the statutory scheme in the interest of “national security” and to check “terrorism”.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta continued arguments on Tuesday in the same vein insisting that interceptions were done only in cases involving national security. He said that the government was not averse to sharing information with a committee of neutral, technical experts, but “would not share information in public. We cannot hide. We have to place everything before the committee of neutral persons and we will. We won’t say it publicly.”
Sibal said that the petitioners were not interested in knowing issues of national security, but the government must state if Pegasus was used or not. The bench then issued notices for now only to the government seeking formal legal responses on why an SIT probe should not be ordered into the allegations. This places the government under an obligation to place any information which does not relate to security matters.
“Meanwhile, we will decide which course of action to follow,” the CJI said, suggesting that the court would also look at materials placed before it and decide for itself if it should go with the government committee or appoint any other committee to examine the allegations.
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