Evaluating the Pegasus Probe: Findings and Limitations of the SC Technical Committee

The Committee's Mandate and Composition

When the Supreme Court established the committee in its October 2021 judgment, it was not merely outsourcing the problem. It was creating a specialized agent of the court to conduct the complex fact-finding necessary to adjudicate a case involving fundamental rights and sophisticated technology.

The committee was structured in two tiers:

1. A three-member Technical Committee of cybersecurity and digital forensics experts to handle the hands-on examination of devices.
2. An overseeing authority led by a retired and highly respected Supreme Court judge, Justice R.V. Raveendran, to supervise the probe and produce a final report. Justice Raveendran was assisted by two other experts, including a former head of India's external intelligence agency, R&AW.

The court gave the committee a clear and extensive mandate, essentially a list of questions it needed answered. You can read a summary of this mandate in the following article from The Indian Express.

As you can see, the committee's job was twofold: to determine the facts of the specific allegations and to recommend broader reforms for a legal framework on surveillance.

The Findings: A Tale of Malware and Non-Cooperation

After several months, the committee submitted its report to the Supreme Court in a sealed cover in August 2022. The full report was not made public. Instead, the-then Chief Justice of India, N.V. Ramana, made a few key observations in open court. These oral remarks are our primary source for understanding the committee's findings.

The NDTV news report below provides a succinct summary of what the Chief Justice revealed on that day.

To summarize and consolidate these points, the committee's report concluded:

1. Forensic Analysis: Of the 29 phones submitted to the committee by the alleged victims, five were found to be infected with some form of malware.
2. Inconclusive Attribution: However, the committee could not conclusively determine if the malware found in those five devices was, in fact, Pegasus. The report noted that some findings could be attributed to "poor cyber hygiene."
3. Government Non-Cooperation: The most critical finding was that the Union Government "did not cooperate" with the investigation, adopting the same non-committal stance it had taken before the Court.

Assessing the Limitations: Why the Anticlimax?

The committee's findings were widely seen as an anticlimax. Despite the Supreme Court's strong initial intervention, the inquiry failed to provide a definitive answer to the central question: Did the Indian government use Pegasus to spy on its citizens? To assess the committee's work, we must analyze its significant limitations, which stem directly from the findings.

Limitation 1: Technical Inconclusiveness

The failure to definitively identify Pegasus spyware on the infected devices was a major setback. While the full technical report is not public, several factors could explain this:

• Sophistication of the Spyware: Pegasus is designed to be stealthy and can even be programmed to self-destruct or remove traces, making forensic detection exceptionally difficult, especially long after an infection.
• Government Non-Cooperation: Without the government's cooperation, the committee had no reference points. It could not, for instance, compare the malware on the phones to a known signature of Pegasus that might have been provided by a government agency, nor could it examine government servers or procurement records.

Limitation 2: The "Stone Wall" of Non-Cooperation

The government's refusal to cooperate was the single biggest obstacle. It continued the strategy of evasion we discussed in the previous lesson. By stonewalling the committee, the executive effectively blocked the investigation into the most crucial terms of reference:

• Was Pegasus procured by any state or central agency?
• Which agency and individuals were responsible?
• Under what law or policy was this done?

The committee could analyze phones, but it could not force the state to incriminate itself. This limitation transformed the inquiry from a potentially explosive fact-finding mission into a technical exercise with no conclusive outcome.

Limitation 3: The Sealed Cover and Judicial Inaction

Perhaps the most profound limitation is the one that followed the submission of the report. Despite the Chief Justice's initial oral commitment to make the report public (with redactions for privacy), it was quickly re-sealed and has remained in the "safe custody" of the court ever since. The case, which was supposed to be heard again in four weeks, has not been listed for a hearing in over two years.

This judicial inaction represents a significant institutional limitation. The initial momentum for transparency and accountability has dissipated, leaving the entire matter in a state of suspended animation. The following article provides a critical perspective on this phase.

The decision to keep the report sealed has effectively ended the public and legal chapter of the Pegasus inquiry in India, leaving the core allegations neither proven nor disproven.

Conclusion

In this lesson, we have assessed the findings and limitations of the Supreme Court-appointed committee on the Pegasus allegations. We moved from the high hopes accompanying its formation to the anticlimactic and opaque reality of its conclusion.

Here are the key takeaways:

• Committee's Findings: The committee confirmed the presence of malware on five of the 29 examined devices but could not conclusively identify it as Pegasus. Its most significant finding was that the Union Government did not cooperate with the probe.
• Key Limitations: The investigation was fundamentally limited by the technical difficulty of detecting Pegasus, the government's refusal to provide any information, and finally, the Supreme Court's own decision to keep the report sealed and not pursue further hearings.
• Unresolved Questions: As a result, the central questions of who procured and deployed the spyware against Indian citizens remain officially unanswered, leaving a critical gap in accountability.

We have now examined the Pegasus controversy from multiple angles: the nature of the allegations, the constitutional principles at stake, the executive's response, and the judiciary's ultimately inconclusive investigation. In our final lesson for this module, we will synthesize these elements to debate the enduring tension between the state's invocation of "national security" and the democratic imperatives of privacy, dissent, and accountability.