Anil Ambani, ex-CBI boss on Pegasus potential targets, reports say

The numbers of Ambani and one other official of the Reliance ADG Group have featured on the list at the time when the Rafale deal came under public scrutiny ahead of the 2019 national elections, The Wire reported.

Besides, the phone number for Dassault Aviation's representative in India, Venkata Rao Posina, former Saab India head Inderjit Sial and Boeing India boss Pratyush Kumar were also on the list, the publication said.

Earlier in the day, the news portal also claimed that former CBI chief Alok Verma, who was fired in 2018 after a clash with the government, was also on the leaked list. He was added as a target just hours after the sacking.

Some 50,000 phone numbers across the world have been identified as people of interest since 2016 by clients of the Israeli firm NSO.

More than 1,000 phone numbers in India appeared on the snooping list of the Pegasus, stated a collaborative investigation report by The Wire, The Washington Post and other media partners in 10 countries.

Names of high profile Indian political personalities like Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, former poll strategist Prashant Kishor, new IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister Prahlad Patel and TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee among others have featured in the potential target list of the Israeli spyware, The Wire had earlier reported in an explosive revelation.

NSO had denied the snooping allegations, claiming that it only offers its spyware to "vetted governments" and said it was "considering a defamation lawsuit".

However, forensic tests had confirmed that some of them were successfully snooped upon by an unidentified agency using Pegasus spyware, The Wire reported.

The data was accessed by Paris-based nonprofit journalism organisation Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International and then shared with the Guardian, The Wire and other media outlets as part of the Pegasus project.