“Congratulations!” That was the most common message of support I received from friends and well-wishers after the July 18 news that my name was featured in a list of journalists whose cellphones had been targeted by the Israeli military-grade spyware Pegasus. I had known since June that I was on the list. My friend and colleague Siddharth Varadarajan, co-founder of India’s independent news portal The Wire—one of the 17 global media partners of this worldwide investigation—was somber when he first informed me. After I agreed to cooperate with the investigation, my device was checked by Amnesty International in early July. They found that my cellphone had been infiltrated by Pegasus as recently as a couple of days earlier.
The leaked data for the investigation, provided by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories, indicated that my cellphone was first placed on the snooping list in July 2018, when I was a deputy editor at The Indian Express newspaper. That year, I won the prestigious Ramnath Goenka award for excellence in journalism, awarded for my reporting on three major news stories: the sacking and replacement of the head of India’s premier federal investigative agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation; the internal conflict and turmoil at the highest levels of India’s Supreme Court over allegations of corruption and induction of new judges; and the multibillion-dollar deal between India and France for Rafale fighter jets, where allegations of wrongdoing, cronyism, and overpricing had gained ground. The deal became a major issue in India’s 2019 national elections.
