Snooping agencies deployed as soon as Adani is touched: Rahul Gandhi on ‘spy attack’

A day after several Opposition leaders received alert notifications on their iPhones, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi attacked the BJP-led Union government, alleging a state-sponsored spy attack on Parliamentarians.

Addressing a press conference in Delhi, Gandhi said this was done as soon as Adani was touched. "As soon as Adani is touched, intelligence agencies, snooping are deployed," Gandhi said, adding that Congress party leaders like KC Venugopal, Pawan Khera, and several other Opposition leaders received the alert.

"...Earlier, I used to think number 1 is PM Modi, number 2 is Adani and number 3 is Amit Shah, but this is wrong, number 1 is Adani, number 2 is PM Modi and number 3 is Amit Shah. We have understood the politics of India and now Adani ji cannot escape. Distraction politics is going on..." the Congress MP said.

"They (BJP) are trying to distract the attention of the youth," he added. Saying he is not scared, Gandhi said the "government" can do as much phone tapping as possible, adding that they can take his phone too. He also wrote words to that effect in a Hindi post on X.

Earlier in the day, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, Trinamool MP Mahua Moitra, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Aam Aadmi Party's Raghav Chadha, as well as CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury alleged that they had received alert messages warning them of hacking attempts.

"Received from an Apple ID, threat-notifications@apple.com, which I have verified. Authenticity confirmed. Glad to keep underemployed officials busy at the expense of taxpayers like me! Nothing more important to do?" Tharoor wrote on Twitter.

Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi wrote: "Wonder who? Shame on you..." and "cc-ed" Union Home Minister Amit Shah. She asked whether the Home Ministry will investigate the matter.

Meanwhile, responding to the controversy, Apple said it "does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker".