Pegasus is an attempt to crush Indian democracy: Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi, Oct 27: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the Supreme Court decision to look into Pegasus snooping matter is big step, adding that the opposition is "vindicated" since the judges have made the points it was flagging.

"Pegasus is an attempt to crush Indian democracy. It is a big step that the Supreme Court has said that they will look into this matter. I am confident that we will get truth out of this," Rahul said addressing a press conference.

"During last Parliament session, we raised Pegasus issue. Today, SC has given it opinion and supported what we were saying. We were asking 3 questions -who authorised Pegasus?, who was it used against and did any other country have access to information of our people," said Rahul.

"We are happy that Supreme Court has accepted to look into the Pegasus issue. We will raise this issue again in Parliament. We will try to have a debate in Parliament. I am sure the BJP will not like to have a debate on this," he added.

"Pegasus was used against CMs, former PMs, BJP's ministers among others. Was PM & HM getting the data obtained through use of Pegasus? If the data of phone tapping of Election Commission, CEC & Opposition leaders are going to PM, then it's a criminal act." Rahul further said.

The Supreme Court set up a three member panel to probe the pegasus snooping row. The panel will be headed by retired Supreme Court judge, Justice R V Raveendran.

We are setting up a committee to probe the truth or falsity of the allegations to be headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court. The committee would be supervised by former Supreme Court judge Justice R V Raveendran, the Bench also said.

The pleas seeking independent probe are related to reports of alleged snooping by government agencies on eminent citizens, politicians and scribes by using Israeli firm NSO's spyware Pegasus. An international media consortium had reported that over 300 verified Indian mobile phone numbers were on the list of potential targets for surveillance using Pegasus spyware.