{ "id": "8e85ed35-d51e-4350-9b21-9a85465f9e51", "created_at": "2026-04-06T00:06:26.940909Z", "updated_at": "2026-04-10T03:24:16.998598Z", "deleted_at": null, "sha1_hash": "cf6b1087bf7d992ed50d8bc2ea50f2755b68fe20", "title": "From Army and BSF to RAW, Spyware Threat Touched National Security Field Too - The Wire", "llm_title": "", "authors": "", "file_creation_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z", "file_modification_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z", "file_size": 158880, "plain_text": "From Army and BSF to RAW, Spyware Threat Touched National\r\nSecurity Field Too - The Wire\r\nBy Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty\r\nPublished: 2021-07-25 · Archived: 2026-04-05 22:41:03 UTC\r\nNew Delhi: On February 11, 2018, K.K. Sharma, who was head of the Border Security Force (BSF) at the time,\r\nmade headlines for attending – in uniform – a conference on border issues organised by a little-known affiliate of\r\nthe Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Kolkata.\r\nMedia reports noted that Sharma shared the stage with the right-wing outfit’s national coordinator Krishna Gopal,\r\nits joint national coordinator Murlidhar, a member of the ruling BJP’s intellectual cell Mohit Roy, and a former\r\njournalist and trustee of several NGOs associated with the RSS, Rantideb Sengupta.\r\nThe news of a serving chief of a central paramilitary force attending an RSS-affiliate’s event raised eyebrows in\r\npolitical circles. The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal objected to Sharma – an IPS officer from\r\nthe 1982 batch – attending the event in his official capacity, with party MP Derek O’Brien tweeting that his party\r\nwould take up the matter with the Union home ministry.\r\nBarely a month after Sharma\r\nattended that event, his telephone numbers were added to a list of numbers containing several hundred from India\r\nmarked as probable targets for surveillance. These numbers are part of a leaked database containing 50,000\r\nnumbers worldwide that an international consortium of media organisations has analysed as part of its Pegasus\r\nProject reporting initiative. The numbers are concentrated in countries that the independent research group Citizen\r\nLab has identified as having an active Pegasus operator capable of delivering the deadly spyware to the\r\nsmartphones of targets.\r\nThe data from the leak was shared with The Wire and 15 other news organisations across the world by the Paris-based media non-profit Forbidden Stories, and Amnesty International’s Security Lab as part of a collaborative\r\ninvestigation and reporting project spanning weeks.\r\nhttps://thewire.in/government/indian-army-bsf-raw-pegasus-spyware-threat\r\nPage 1 of 4\n\nNSO, the company which sells Pegasus, denies the data has anything to do with its spyware.\r\nIn the absence of digital forensics, it is not possible to establish whether Sharma was subjected to an attempted\r\nhack or infection. But the fact that the leaked records include three phone numbers used by him, two of which he\r\nstill uses after his retirement in 2018, indicate he was very much a person of interest to the Indian client of the\r\nNSO Group during the time he was in service as BSF chief.\r\nIt is not clear what the purpose of any potential surveillance might have been. Serving officers are not meant to be\r\npolitically aligned, but if the Indian agency in question was interested in studying the extent to which Sharma\r\nactually sympathised with the RSS, whatever it learned about his leanings clearly did not disqualify him from a\r\nkey post-retirement assignment.\r\nSoon after Sharma retired, the Election Commission (EC) appointed him special central police observer for the\r\nimpending Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal and Jharkhand. As per that order Sharma “would oversee the\r\ndeployment and other security related issues in the said states.”\r\nIn those polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideological fount, the RSS, were trying to wrest as many\r\nparliamentary seats as possible from the TMC in Bengal, and also ensure a good haul from Jharkhand, where its\r\nstate government was facing strong anti-incumbency.\r\nA day after Sharma’s appointment, the TMC objected to his deployment in the state. Showing a photo of Sharma\r\nattending the RSS event in Kolkata in 2018 to local media, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that\r\nher party would write to the EC. “This is the picture of K.K. Sharma in uniform with BJP and RSS leaders. Sitting\r\nbeside him is Rantideb Sengupta (who was by then a BJP candidate in the 2019 parliamentary polls from the\r\nstate). Is it democracy? My humble submission to the EC is that the (Union) home ministry is misleading it. How\r\ncan an RSS man be appointed as the central police observer? Moreover, he is retired. How can a retired officer\r\ncommand police officers on duty,” asked Banerjee. The CPI(M) stood with Banerjee in opposing Sharma’s\r\nelection assignment.\r\nTwo days later, the EC replaced Sharma with Vivek Dube, another retired IPS officer.\r\nThe Wire reached out to Sharma for a comment, but he declined to participate in this story.\r\nBSF commandant in Assam as person of interest\r\nThe leaked database also shows that a BSF inspector general of police, Jagdish Maithani, was selected as a\r\npotential target for surveillance around the same time as Sharma.\r\nA BSF commandant posted in Assam, Maithani appears to have been of considerable interest to an Indian client of\r\nNSO between 2017 and 2019.\r\nMaithani has been associated with the MHA’s comprehensive integrated border management system (CIBMS)\r\nproject or smart fencing, where physical fencing of the border, including in the riverine areas with Bangladesh, is\r\nnot possible. According to an Economic Times report from 2018, the CIBMS is a concept developed by Maithani.\r\nWhen contacted by The Wire, Maithani did not comment on the matter, instead saying, “I have no problem\r\nanswering any of your queries provided all service related matters are routed through the force’s public relations\r\nhttps://thewire.in/government/indian-army-bsf-raw-pegasus-spyware-threat\r\nPage 2 of 4\n\nofficer.”\r\nAccording to a former senior BSF officer, Maithani was “handling trials of surveillance systems during that period\r\nwhile posted in our force HQ, and also in MHA. The Israelis had lots of stakes in it.”\r\nFormer officer took RAW to court, ended up on list\r\nAnother officer who was marked for probable surveillance was Jitendra Kumar Ojha, a retired senior official from\r\nthe Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s external spy agency. His number figures in the database as does\r\nhis wife’s.\r\nOjha, who was in charge of training Indian spies at RAW’s academy in Delhi between 2013 and 2015 and also\r\nserved in London, was eased out of the service in January 2018. Aggrieved by his premature ‘retirement’ from\r\nservice, he moved the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) in February 2018, and his matter came up the next\r\nmonth.\r\nAlso read: Presence of Over 60 Women in Leaked List Highlights ‘Bodily Violation’ Posed by Spyware\r\nThe leaked database shows that Ojha and his wife were selected as persons of interest around that time.\r\nThe CAT dismissed Ojha’s appeal in February 2019, following which he moved the Delhi high court, where the\r\nmatter is still pending.\r\nAccording to a news story by Praveen Swami in Firstpost, Ojha’s dismissal “had something to do with Samant\r\nGoel, an IPS officer from Punjab”. Goel is presently the RAW chief. Calling Ojha an officer who “in 2010 had\r\nwon the Uttam Seva Praman Patra – an award which is only given to officers with at least six outstanding\r\nappraisals over a decade” – Swamy noted that “he played a role in several important national security cases,\r\nincluding that of Surat-bombing accused Hanif ‘Tiger’ Patel – the only success of its kind, so far, in India’s\r\ndecades-long campaign to extradite fugitives from the United Kingdom.”\r\nOjha told The Wire, “This is brazenly criminal, particularly to have brought my wife’s phone under surveillance. I\r\nsuspect this is being done at the behest of criminalised officers, with the objective to bring psychological pressure\r\non me, while I fight my case.”\r\nArmy officers who moved courts enter snoop list\r\nThe leaked database also contains the numbers of at least two Indian Army officers who took on the government\r\non service-related matters.\r\nColonel Mukul Dev shot to prominence in 2017 when he sent a legal notice to the secretary of defence arguing\r\nagainst the government order to scrap free rations for officers who are posted in peace areas. He was posted as\r\ndeputy judge advocate general in the Jodhpur-based 12 Corps.\r\nDev’s number was identified as a probable target for surveillance in 2019, according to the leaked data. “I am\r\nsurprised to know that this may have happened. The only reason I can think of is that they perhaps did not like the\r\nfact that I consistently raised my voice for the welfare of the Indian Army,” he told The Wire. “Under this\r\ngovernment, whoever raises genuine concerns is looked at with suspicion.”\r\nhttps://thewire.in/government/indian-army-bsf-raw-pegasus-spyware-threat\r\nPage 3 of 4\n\nThe Wire spoke to him on the number mentioned in the records and he confirmed that this was among the phone\r\nnumbers he used at the time his number appears in the Pegasus Project database.\r\nAlso read: ‘Somebody Has to Do the Dirty Work’: NSO Founders Defend Pegasus Spyware\r\nColonel Amit Kumar was also from the legal division within the armed forces and selected for potential\r\nsurveillance at around the same time as Dev.\r\nKumar was posted as a legal officer at the corps headquarters in Jammu and Kashmir when in August 2018, a few\r\nmonths prior to his appearance in the database, he filed a petition in the Supreme Court on behalf of 356 Army\r\npersonnel against what they apprehended was an impending dilution of the Armed Forces (Special Forces) Act\r\n(AFSPA).\r\nAFSPA gives protection from prosecution to military personnel serving in areas categorised as disturbed or\r\ninsurgency hit. Kumar’s plea followed a spate of FIRs against military personnel deployed in parts of the north-east and Jammu and Kashmir where AFSPA applies.\r\nHis petition argued that the “garb of protection of human rights should not be taken as a shield to protect the\r\npersons involved in the terrorist act.”\r\nThe petition was argued pro-bono by former attorney general of India Mukul Rohatgi.\r\nKumar said that he was aware that he may have been under surveillance in 2020, but was surprised to learn that it\r\nmay have begun in 2018. “I am not anti-national. What will they get from my phone? My phone is filled with\r\npatriotism. There is nothing else of interest,” he told The Wire.\r\nHe also said that he can understand if the security establishment conducts surveillance for reasons of national\r\nsecurity. “But even then, they should first get the permissions required as per law,” he said. “Or they should not\r\nget caught.”\r\nKumar took premature retirement from the armed forces in March 2021.\r\nThe Wire was unable to forensically test any of the phones associated with the persons in this story. While the\r\nappearance of a number in the Pegasus Project database is an indication of official interest in the person\r\nconcerned, only an examination of the phones data can conclusively establish whether or not it was targeted by\r\nPegasus spyware.\r\nDuring the course of its investigation, The Wire found 10 phones with traces of Pegasus, including that of the\r\nopposition political strategist Prashant Kishor and several journalists.\r\nThe Pegasus Project is a collaborative investigation that involves more than 80 journalists from 17 news\r\norganisations in 10 countries coordinated by Forbidden Stories with the technical support of Amnesty\r\nInternational’s Security Lab. Read all our coverage here.\r\nSource: https://thewire.in/government/indian-army-bsf-raw-pegasus-spyware-threat\r\nhttps://thewire.in/government/indian-army-bsf-raw-pegasus-spyware-threat\r\nPage 4 of 4", "extraction_quality": 1, "language": "EN", "sources": [ "Malpedia" ], "references": [ "https://thewire.in/government/indian-army-bsf-raw-pegasus-spyware-threat" ], "report_names": [ "indian-army-bsf-raw-pegasus-spyware-threat" ], "threat_actors": [ { "id": "dfee8b2e-d6b9-4143-a0d9-ca39396dd3bf", "created_at": "2022-10-25T16:07:24.467088Z", "updated_at": "2026-04-10T02:00:05.000485Z", "deleted_at": null, "main_name": "Circles", "aliases": [], "source_name": "ETDA:Circles", "tools": [], "source_id": "ETDA", "reports": null } ], "ts_created_at": 1775433986, "ts_updated_at": 1775791456, "ts_creation_date": 0, "ts_modification_date": 0, "files": { "pdf": "https://archive.orkl.eu/cf6b1087bf7d992ed50d8bc2ea50f2755b68fe20.pdf", "text": "https://archive.orkl.eu/cf6b1087bf7d992ed50d8bc2ea50f2755b68fe20.txt", "img": "https://archive.orkl.eu/cf6b1087bf7d992ed50d8bc2ea50f2755b68fe20.jpg" } }