Srinagar (Jammu-Kashmir): Former chief minister and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti on Friday said the BJP had taken a leaf out the British colonial administration to suppress dissenting voices as it allegedly spied on political opponents and dissenters. "A spyware used against terrorists has been weaponised to deal with political opponents & dissenters. BJP has taken a leaf out of how Britishers would suspect & treat Indians during the colonial era. GOI has gone rogue & is brazenly subverting basic human rights," Mehbooba said in a tweet. Her name, too, figured in the list of people of potential targets of surveillance through the Pegasus spyware between 2017 and mid-2019, as reported by a news portal, The Wire.
According to the report, 25 people from Kashmir, including separatist leader Bilal Lone, former Delhi University professor SAR Geelani, two PDP members, family members of Mehbooba Mufti, brother of J&K Apni Party president Altaf Bukhari, family members of Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, figure in the list.
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The separatist amalgam in Kashmir All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) , too, condemned the "targeted surveillance" on its chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and his colleagues. In a statement, the Hurriyat spokesman condemned the targeted surveillance on its chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and senior executive members Bilal Ghani Lone and Masroor Abbas Ansari. "Hacking into people's phones for surveillance is a willful and direct violation of the universally acknowledged fundamental right to privacy, a basic human right, and those involved in it should be tried," the spokesman said, adding the phone hacking acknowledged the fact that in Jammu and Kashmir, the basic human rights of an entire population remained suspended. "The writ of the state rules with a heavy hand so to expect redressal of this issue, especially from those that are indulging in it, is very unlikely," he said.
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Earlier, four journalists from Jammu and Kashmir, including former New Delhi Bureau chief of DNA Iftikhar Geelani, Muzamil Jaleel of Indian Express, Aurangzeb Naqshbandi of Hindustan Times and Sumir Kaul of PTI figured in the list. At least 300 people in India and as many as 50,000 worldwide have been identified by the global collaborative investigative project as targets of the surveillance.
