The Congress on Sunday alleged that senior party leader and general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's phone was also hacked with the use of the Israeli spyware Pegasus. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said Gandhi also received a message from WhatsApp informing her that her phone was suspected to have been hacked.
The party, however, did not say exactly when Gandhi received the message.
"I want to tell that Priyanka Gandhi also received a similar message from WhatsApp around the same time," Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said, responding to a question about Praful Patel and Mamata Banerjee receiving messages from the Facebook-owned messaging platform.
Gandhi received the message around the same time when WhatsApp was sending similar messages to those whose phones were allegedly hacked, Surjewala said.
In September, WhatsApp had informed the Indian government that as many as 121 Indian users were spied by the Israeli spyware Pegasus. Former union minister Praful Patel and former Lok Sabha MP Santosh Bharatiya were among the individuals who were targets of the WhatsApp hacking earlier this year. However, according to sources, the IT ministry has contended that the information received from the messaging app earlier was inadequate and incomplete.
So far, top lawyers, human rights activists, and journalists have confirmed that they were targeted by spyware through WhatsApp.
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