Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal, SpiceJet MD Ajay Singh, top PSU officials potential Pegasus targets: Report

As part of Pegasus Project, news portal The Wire released another list of names of people whose phones were potential targets for Pegasus spyware.

This includes Naresh Goyal, founder of Jet Airways; B.C. Tripathi, ex-chief at GAIL India and Ajay Singh, SpiceJet chairman and managing director.

The list also contains multiple businessmen or officials of companies who have had run-ins with the law over the last few years, mostly due to investigations of loan fraud. This includes Vikram Kothari of Rotomac Pens (and his son Rahul), and C. Sivasankaran, former Aircel promoter, The Wire said.

It pointed out that Goyal’s appearance on the Pegasus Project list comes a few weeks before he was stopped at the Mumbai airport in May 2019, and his number stops appearing in the database around a month after he was prevented from leaving the country.

The report by The Wire said that at least three business executives working in big corporate houses are also on the list, whose job entailed ‘engaging with thorny policy issues that affect their companies’. These include a mid-level official at the Adani Group, one individual who used to work with the Essar Group and another formerly with SpiceJet. The Wire did not disclose their names.

The report also named V. Balasubramanian, associated with Reliance Industries for a long time, and A.N. Sethuraman of Reliance ADA Group. Both professionals once belonged to the undivided Reliance Group, and were accused of being involved in an Official Secrets Act case pertaining to stolen government documents, the report said.

As per the report, the leaked list also contains at least five corporate executives associated with India’s mutual fund industry. These include professionals from companies such as Franklin Templeton, DSP BlackRock and Motilal Oswal. The Wire did not disclose their names.

Two numbers, one for a former boss of Life Insurance Corporation of India and the other for a former executive director of the Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertiliser Corporation also appear on the list, the report said.

Earlier in the day, a list released by The Wire contained the name of Rajeshwar Singh, an Enforcement Directorate officer who led several high-profile investigations conducted by the agency such as the 2G spectrum scam and the Aircel-Maxis matter. He was also involved in probes into the Sahara group and the disproportionate assets case of Andhra Pradesh chief minister Jagan Reddy.

The report said V.K. Jain, a former IAS officer who worked as a personal assistant to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, also appears to have marked as a person of interest.

The report said that leaked records indicate that the telephone number of a senior employee of the NITI Aayog was also included as a probable target for surveillance. The Wire said it verified the number and spoke to the person involved but is withholding the identity at their request as they are no longer working at the government body.

An officer who is currently an under secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office was also selected for potential surveillance in 2017, The Wire said, adding that he was in charge of Prime Minister Modi’s tours in 2017 when the as-yet-unidentified Indian client of the NSO Group showed interest in him.