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Supreme Court on Friday stayed proceedings of Enquiry Commission constituted by State of West Bengal to investigate into allegations relating to Pegasus spyware scandal.

A bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana, Justice Surya Kant and Justice Hima Kohli said, “What is this? Last time you gave an undertaking….but again you started an inquiry?”

It is to be noted that on the last date of hearing, the CJI had stated that the court expects the commission led by Justice Madan B Lokur to wait. "The issue is definitely connected to other petitions and in all fairness, we expect you to wait,” Court has said. This was after Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi gave an oral assurance that the inquiry by State Govt. Committee, shall not proceed unless the Top Court hears the pending petitions in the matter.

The plea has been filed by Global Village Foundation Charitable Trust alleging that the West Bengal Commission is going ahead with the probe into the Pegasus issue despite the independent committee constituted by the apex court over the issue.

Senior Advocate Harish Salve appearing for the trust submitted that the plea has been filed challenging the West Bengal Commission proceedings.

Singhvi submitted that, "I had submitted that the State don't control the Commission and I'll convey the constraint. I did. The commission started. Please call their counsel and pass orders. I cannot as state Government ask them not".

The bench issued notice on the plea stating that the Court understands the "predicament" of the State.

Earlier, the Supreme Court had appointed a committee headed by Justice RV Raveendran (Retired SC Judge), while rejecting the plea of the Union of India to allow them to appoint an Expert Committee for the purposes of investigating the allegations.

On 19th July 2021, a consortium of 17 international media organizations including an Indian news portal published an investigation around a leaked list of phone numbers from across the world, named the Pegasus Project.

These numbers in the leaked list are allegedly the “target list” of phones hacked /to be hacked by the Pegasus spyware product sold by Israel’s NSO Group.

The target list is said to contain the numbers of 136 prominent politicians, judges, journalists, businessmen, rights activists, etc.

NSO Group, which owns ‘Pegasus Spyware’, was sued by WhatsApp and Facebook in 2019 before the US Californian Court for exploiting its platform to carry out remote surveillances. NSO claimed sovereign immunity as its products were sold only to governments and state agencies. However, The Californian Court ruled in favor of WhatsApp and dismissed NSO’s claim.

Case Title: Global Village Foundation Public Charitable Trust Vs. Union of India and Ors.