In India, the story unfolded differently. Allegations that Pegasus was used to target Indian citizens emerged in 2019 and resurfaced in 2021. (File Photo)
Anirudh Nigam
Dec 26, 2024 15:41 IST First published on: Dec 26, 2024 at 15:20 IST
Anton Chekhov famously said that if a gun appears on stage in act one, it must go off by act three. In India’s inquiry into the alleged misuse of Pegasus spyware by the government to snoop on politicians, bureaucrats, journalists, and civil society activists, the stage was set with an arsenal of accountability mechanisms: Expert committees, court interventions, commissions of inquiry, and parliamentary debates. As the curtains fell, none of these mechanisms delivered, leaving India’s inquiry to fizzle into obscurity and silence. The recent decision by a US District Court holding Israel’s NSO group – the creator of Pegasus – liable for hacking WhatsApp users provides a stark contrast to the Indian inquiry. As India’s investigative machinery stumbled, US courts have delivered refreshing factual clarity in the Pegasus saga.
This contrast is not just an indictment of India’s inquiry, but also a symptom of a deeper institutional and political malaise with troubling implications for democracy, public trust, and India’s global standing. The art of an inquiry lies in asking the right questions and pursuing them relentlessly. The Indian state apparatus is still struggling, or perhaps, is simply unwilling, to wield the brush.
A tale of two systems
In the US, the Pegasus controversy triggered a legal battle between WhatsApp and the NSO group. WhatsApp alleged that the NSO group “reverse engineered” its code and hacked the phones of 1,400 of its users. What followed was a lawsuit marked by NSO’s persistent attempts to evade accountability. The company refused the jurisdiction of US courts, disobeyed orders to produce evidence, declined to share its source code outside Israel, and tried every procedural delay in the book. Yet, the US judicial system, operating with speed and clarity, cut through this gamesmanship. It prioritised protecting WhatsApp’s proprietary technology and the privacy rights of its users, culminating in a decisive ruling: NSO could not hide behind legal technicalities and is liable for its actions.
In India, the story unfolded differently. Allegations that Pegasus was used to target Indian citizens emerged in 2019 and resurfaced in 2021. The government’s response was silence – neither confirming nor denying its use of the spyware. The Supreme Court formed a committee of technical experts to look into the allegations. Parallel commissions of inquiry set up by the West Bengal government were stayed by the Supreme Court. The committee of technical experts found no conclusive evidence of the spyware in the phones it examined. Perhaps most significantly, WhatsApp and Apple, likely the most knowledgeable about details of Pegasus’s technical operation, are missing from the list of depositions to the committee, though the committee stated it would “write to them” for their inputs. Notably, the report of the committee has not yet been released publicly.
Two structural factors partially explain this difference. First, WhatsApp’s comfort with the American judicial system is key. US courts are quick to act and operate with a strong ethos of protecting commercial interests and individual privacy. This gave WhatsApp the confidence to engage with the judicial process, even as NSO deployed every delaying tactic. In India, by contrast, judicial delays are a fact of life. WhatsApp’s own challenge to the Indian government’s encryption rules has been pending since 2021, with no resolution in sight. For a company eager to restore trust in the public eye, there is little reason to place faith in a system where delays and obfuscation are commonplace. Second, the geopolitical influence of the US matters. NSO’s blacklisting by the US government – a move that restricts its ability to operate in global markets – amplified the economic consequences for the NSO group, indirectly creating leverage to enforce compliance within the judicial process. India, unfortunately, lacks both the institutional maturity and geopolitical influence to deliver a similar blow.
A saga of strategic evasion
While structural limitations explain part of the failure, the deeper cause of India’s stumbling inquiry lies in the state’s unwillingness to engage with the Pegasus controversy at all. The state’s silence on Pegasus was framed as a matter of national security, but it reeked of evasion. By refusing to confirm or deny its use of Pegasus, the government effectively stonewalled any meaningful investigation. It showed no interest in assisting the investigation – even when its own ministers were alleged victims of surveillance. The committee was left to reverse engineer phones of witnesses to detect infections, seemingly without help from state agencies or technology companies. This was an evasion of responsibility by the government that communicated complicity as much as it obscured the truth. Parliamentary debates devolved into shouting matches and the judiciary hesitated to push too hard. Ultimately, what should have been an exercise in transparency became a theatre of inaction.
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Anton Chekhov’s rule about the gun is not just advice for playwrights – it’s a lesson that action must follow when the instruments of accountability are within grasp. In the Pegasus case, the US courts delivered a verdict that resonates globally. India, by contrast, left its arsenal untouched, waiting for a moment that never came. The tools of accountability are still onstage – sealed reports can be opened, probes initiated, and opposition can move beyond rhetoric to demand systemic surveillance reform. The question is: Will we ever pick them up and fire? Or will they remain props in a drama of evasion?
The writer is a MPA candidate at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
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