Mamta says she turned down Pegasus spyware offer

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday revealed that her government was offered the controversial Pegasus spyware for ₹25 crore, an offer she turned down.

“They were selling their machines” [software] everywhere. So, they also came to our police and imposed a cost of 25 crores. This was four or five years ago. When the information reached me, I said we do not want it,” the chief minister told reporters at the state secretariat. Ms Banerjee was responding to a question whether the company had approached the West Bengal government.

“If this [Pegasus] It was a completely different matter if it was used for the interest of the country or for security reasons, but it has been used for political purposes, against judges, officials, which is not welcome at all,” he said. charged up. The chief minister, while participating in a discussion in the state assembly on Wednesday on the issue of budget allocation to the home department, had said that his government was offered Pegasus spyware. He also said that the Andhra Pradesh government had used the software “in the time of Chandrababu (Naidu).”

In July 2021, Ms Banerjee had urged the Supreme Court to take suo moto Pegsus took cognizance of the use of spyware and alleged that his phone was tapped. The Trinamool Congress president had pasted transparent adhesive tape on the camera of his mobile phone to prove his point. She later alleged that the telephones of her nephew Abhishek Banerjee and political strategist and I-PAC founder Prashant Kishor were also tapped.

In July 2021, he set up a commission of inquiry into the spyware issue, including retired Supreme Court Justice Madan B Lokur and former Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya. Later, in December 2021, the Supreme Court of India, which is hearing the case, stayed the judicial inquiry initiated by the state government of West Bengal.